Creativity Quotes

MAYA ANGELOU Memoirist, poet & civil rights activist

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

WILLIAM BLAKE Poet and Painter, 1757 - 1827

A Poet, a Painter, a Musician, an Architect; the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.

I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty of both body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.

JOHANNES BRAHMS composer 1833 - 1897

Straight away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies and orchestration.

JOHN CALVIN, Reformation Theologian

All the arts come from God and are to be respected as divine inventions.

But, as sculpture and painting are gifts from God, what i insist on is, that both shall be used purely and lawfully, that gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon us, for His glory and out good, shall not be preposterously abused, nay, shall not be perverted to our destruction

RYAN CALAIS CAMERON, Playwright & co-founder of Nouveau Riche performance artists & producers collective

That verse from Jeremiah was one of the last things I put in the play...It saved my life, knowing there was a saviour who had a hope for me. That knowledge allowed me -and still allows me - to understand that, regardless of what the situation is, there is a hope for me. When talking on suicide, there was no way that I could create a play essentially showing Black boys that there is life worth living without also talking about the fact that Christ saved my life. I would be a liar if I didn't. (Church Times 5April 2024)

NICK CAVE, Rock Musician & Author

I've been fascinated by the stories of the Bible on that basic level as stories, but the Christ stories have a strange pull. I like to imagine what's going on, because there's not a lot of information. It's interesting to read between the lines and work out what's actually going on. Like the story I just told you about the chaos that's going on , and everyone doesn't know what to do, and Christ steps into chaos. (Church Times, 25 November 2022)

Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending; it says the world is worth believing in. In time we find that this is so. (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 14 August 2024, quoted in Church Times 23 August 2024)

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Poet 1772 - 1834

The IMAGINATION  then I consider as either primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the Living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, as s repetition of the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. (Biographia Literaria).

THEODORE DREISER Novelist and Journalist, 1871 - 1945

Art is the stored honey of the human soul.

AYO EDEBIRI, actress

I don't think there's more riveting public speaking than seeing a pastor in the pulpit on Sunday morning. [Church] was the first place I was exposed to art and music and public speaking and reading. ( Interview, The Times, 17 Jan 2024)

MAKOTO FUJIMURA  Artist & Writer

This book is about human imagination that is based on God's imagination and creativity. For God, to imagine is to create. For us on, the other hand, as God's creatures, there is a gap between what we see in faith (imagination) and what we create. ( "Art + Faith : A Theology of Making" , Yale University Press 2020)

Artists do not seek proof of God's existence; artists explore the unknown in search of deeper meaning. The mystery of God opens up to those who create....Modernist assumptions that verifiable knowledge is the ultimate path to truth have overlooked the fact that mystery and beauty are at the core of knowing. This book is an effort to affirm such journeys into the unknown, and to provide langauage and a map. (ibid)

Hebrews 11:1 states that 'faith is the substance...of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'. Faith, in this way toward hope, trains our imagination to search out 'evidence of things not seen'. (ibid)

Unless we become modern makers in the image of the Maker, we labour in vain. Whether we are plumbers, garbage collectors, taxi drivers or CEO's, we are called by the Great Artist to co-create..... (ibid).

Beauty is not cosmetic. Cosmetic beauty will not result in lasting happiness. We need to love even more through our wrinkled faces. People like Mother Teresa prove that love is the most beautiful gift. In her wrinkles, we see God's love. It is through this path of gaining wrinkles earned by loving people that we will see creativity that not only restores but also redeems. It is with the relaxed confidence of Lazarus that we can truly  be present and enjoy the dance, the final dance, that begins the New Creation. (ibid)

JOSIE GAMBLE: Founder, Christian Creative Network and Christian Creative Directory

Creativity is my superpower for God.

I'm hopeful that, as the value of creativity is restored, we'll see a generation of kingdom creatives influencing UK culture like never before.

(Church Times 24 June 2022) 

JULIA GOLDING, Author

Jane [ Austen] wouldn't think in terms of Christian themes because she was a Christian...in a Christian society. Christianity permeates everything, such as the moral codes and social life of her characters. perhaps certain aspects rise to the fore. Honesty is the big one - emotional honesty as well - shared by her good characters, whereas pretence and hypocrisy belong to the bad. Love and sacrifice are other important themes...    (Church Times 3 Feb 2023)

JOHN GREENING, Poet

Find the right word for something and a kind of miracle happens. I rather like the idea of Jesus as a poet.

I'd choose to be locked in a church with Sibelius, although he might raid the communion wine. He didn't write overtly religious music, but he spoke to friends about some of his mystical experience, invariably filtered through nature. He also spoke about how God had thrown down the constituent parts of the Second Symphony and left him to put the mosaic together. I tend to work the same way. 

(Church Times 8 Dec23)

MALCOLM GUITE, Poet, Priest & Writer

The artist must completely respect the earthly and human integrity of the material they work with: they are not to obscure or overwrite God's good earth with theological slogans, however pious, the bush must still be a bush deeply rooted in the earth. And yet...It must draw us as the burning bush drew Moses, to turn aside to take of our shoes from our feet and see with a gasp of wonder that the ordinary has been transfigured, that the veil has bee lifted and the glory of God's presence has been shining through. ("Lifting the Veil: Imagination & the Kingdom of God", Canterbury Press, 2022)

...Coleridge sees that there is a creative or imaginative element, even agency, in all perception - in other words there is already a deep imaginative shaping in the way we see the world.....this beautiful human imaginative shaping of the way we perceive the world is, itself, part of what it means to be made in the image of God. It is, indeed, the work of the Logos within us... (ibid) 

...the incarnation of the LOGOS, that turning point in the story of the Cosmos, in which the Word became flesh and the Creator entered His Creation was itself a healing and reconciliation of the false split between reason and imagination, comprehension and apprehension, history and myth. (ibid)

All art...Christian or not, depends on and participates in that connection made for us by the One who came 'from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven' who is and always will be the living bridge between the two. (ibid)

SUZANNA HAMILTON, Actor

The desire to hear stories is the seed of faith, because imagination is a spiritual thing...When I listen to a story, I can't help wondering what's going to happen. Listening nudges me on towards something else, something other. It's been a slow realisation that acting is a sort of intermediary thing in other people's spiritual lives, and as such there is a weigh to it at times.

I would choose to be locked in a church with Mary, the Mother of God. I like praying using the rosary and would love to listen and sit with this woman who changed the world by saying yes.      (Church Times 5 April 2024)

NIGEL HOPPER, Scripture Union

Following Jesus means, first and foremost, being with him (v39). However, Jesus' renaming of Simon as Peter (v42) reminds us that those whom Jesus accepts as they are do not remain as they are: they find themselves caught up in God's work of new creation.  (Reflection on John 1:35-42, 18 January 2024)

AYLA LEPINE, REVD DR, Art Historian

The medieval theologian and mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg wrote: "The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw, and I knew I saw, all things in God and God in all things." Art can bring people closer to God, and it often does, but that art need not be made by a Christian artist or contain obviously Christian themes. (Church Times)

SIR JAMES MACMILLAN CBE Composer & Conductor

Another trait in my aesthetic is the ongoing search for the sacred, which is not unusual in musical composition, even in modernity. I can think of many important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries who were, or are still, shaped and inspired by religious considerations...I've always been aware of the umbilical link between music and liturgy through history, but many composers in the past also seemed to be midwives of faith. They wrote their beautiful works in response to biblical stories and the sharing of these in musical community...The composers who, I feel, express this search for, or experience of, the sacred to me are Tallis, Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven, Wagner , Messiaen....Some say that all music is sacred. I certainly feel that it isn't only settings of liturgical texts which take us in a Godward direction. Beethoven certainly believed this, and thought there was a moral and religious dimension to his symphonies as well as his Masses."   (Church Times, 4 October 2024)

THOMAS MERTON Monk & writer, 1915 - 1968

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

MICHAELANGELO Sculptor & painter 1475 - 1564

The true work of art is but a shadow of the Divine perfection.

SOPHIE NEVILLE Writer

I somehow brought out "Ride the Wings of Morning" followed by "The Secrets of Filming Swallows and Amazons" when we were renovating the family house in Hampshire, and began writing articles while contributing to non-fiction publications. I now belong to a consortium of Christian writers called Resolute Books, with Rush Leigh, Clare Dunn, Paul Trembling, Liz Carter and members of the Association of Christian Writers. my paperback on "The making of Swallows and Amazons" is published by Lutterworth Press. They are based in Cambridge, where I spoke on writing for the screen at the British Christian Writers' Conference last year. (Church Times 15 March 2024)

BORIS PASTERNAK Poet & novelist 1819 - 1861

Art has two constants, two unending concerns: it always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All good, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John.

PUCCINI

The music of this opera [Madame Butterfly] was dictated to me by God: I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to the public.

JOHN GODFREY SAXE  Poet 1816 -186&

It is wise to learn. It is God-like to create.

SISTER TERESA FJC Author, Hope and the nearness of God" The 2022 Lent Book

The Holy Spirit is the poetry and music of God. The Christian tradition offers a magnificent variety of verse and song - new and old, ancient and modern -declaring that the Spirit, the breath of God, is blowing through our world, our universe. In beautiful, insightful poems, in serene or stirring melodies, generations of poets and musicians have been inspired to celebrate the indwelling presence of the Spirit in the whole of creation.

Music speaks without words, and poetry - 'the finger of God's right hand'- points to its message for the present time. Inaudible, invisible, intangible, the Spirit's creative power and art calls us to see that " God is love, and anyone who lives in love lives in God and God lives in him" (1 John 4:126).

(Chuch Times 10 June 2022)

J R R TOLKIEN

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. (Private letter, 1953).

LEONARDO DA VINCI

We, by our arts, may be called the grandsons of God.

KURT VONNEGUT writer & humourist 1922 - 2007

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is to make your soul grow, for Heaven's sake. So do it.