Creative Impulse Quotes

“When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lampost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: "it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks." And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it.

When I read this letter of Van Gogh's it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about *design* and *balance* and getting *interesting planes* into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest *acedemical* tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on.

But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it.

And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Why does it seem as if the poorly adjusted people – the misfits and social outsiders – create art and the most sane and rational of the human species make money? Does creating art require a person to tap into the irrational magma of their soul?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“While engaged in automatic writing I strain to create a protective personal haven, ferret out a padded cell where I can rapturously hold court with the voltaic cells of the self. I labor in solitary, transfixed in a suspended state of consciousness. Freewheeling writing creates a bridgeworks to the situs where hidden gems of insight and candid genuineness wait to be unsheathed by the penetrating beam of a reflective mind trolling for inspirational insight. Probing putative desires while contemporaneously fencing with a barrage of suppressed insecurities, requires piercing protective layers of denial and traveling with teratological demons to confront the monstrous self-destructive gene lodged in the deepest recesses of a confused psyche.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writers resist the terrifying silence that engulfs us.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Some writers probe their quest for individuality; others explore loneliness, anxiety, and sense of alienation. Writers lament injustice, grief, and dejection. Some writers devote their efforts to an appraisal of ontological torment. Some writers seek to examine the implications of life and death by reflecting upon the restrictions and insufficiency of the human condition. Some writers survey the ramifications of fractured human consciousness in an industrial and scientific community undergoing rapid technological changes. Many writers attempt to release their inner tension and employ writing as a transformative process to effect personal change in their lives. If a person writes as they dream, they will encounter an inner world that assists them function in an awakened state.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Similar to other people, I suffer from my own brand of neurosis – a functional mental and emotional disorder involving emotional distress, indecision, social awkwardness, and interpersonal maladjustment. Unlike other rational people, I also suffer from mental delusions. It is a risky gambit attempting to hold at bay a pressing pack of personal abnormalities and a hazardous stable of personal neuroses including obsessional conduct, and compulsive thoughts while simultaneously straddling the horizontal bars of rationality and irrationality.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“All forms of procreation including birth and artistic endeavors are a response to the imminence of death. All acts of creation begin with termination of the old lifeless habits and the vigorous pursuit of life sustaining ideas.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Both memory and imagination arrest time. By conjoining memory and imagination in forming storytelling’s language, style, and texture, writers’ negate the mind’s march into forgetfulness. We employ the full sprung use of memory and imagination to blunt our descent into nothingness.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Art reflects the current composition of a human soul. Perhaps when the artist finally arrives at the point of making art, an artist perceives all earlier drafts as remnants of their former loathsome self. Perhaps when the songwriter stops writing songs, the singer ceases singing, the musician no longer strums his or her instrument, and the poet no longer strings lyrical verses together they have entered a kingdom of one, a realm of aesthetical and ethical certitude. Perhaps when the writer who creates a piece of literature worthy of bestowing the exalted title of art, he or she must exhibit the same gracious manners by following suit by speaking no more.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“All people must advance through the same physical stages of life and deal with the similar environmental challenges, societal obligations, and family duties. Is it common for the incessant demands of survival completely to inundate the vast majority of people, if not utterly incapacitate them? Do the external conundrums of birth, taxes, illness, and death preoccupy most people? If so, will only select people seek clarity? Do most people fill their lives to the brim with the stupendous task of making a living, taking care of household matters, and chasing recreation? If most people expend all their energy reserves in mundane subsistence activities, how is it that select people of every era create magnificent works of art, literature, and music that uplift all of humanity?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls