Process Quotes

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.

A painting is not thought out in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it

Got to start by finding it, have we? Can't start by looking for it, I suppose?

Success each day should be judged by the seeds sown, not the harvest reaped.

To me, smoking pot meant sitting with a newspaper on my legs, rolling the seeds down, pulling the twigs out and finally producing a perfectly cylindrical, absolutely wonderful joint that you either locked at both ends or pinched off, or pinched at one end and left open at the other.

It's very helpful to start with something that's true. If you start with something that's false, you're always covering your tracks. Something simple and true, that has a lot of possibilities, is a nice way to begin.

The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.

You sit and you let your fingers go to wherever they are going to go. You wait until you start to hear something, and you start to figure out what it is that you're doing. And then you add another piece next to that piece, and wait to see if some kind of pattern or something interesting starts to grow, and then you cultivate it.

As with every phenomenon of the objective universe, the first step toward understanding work is to analyze it.

It makes no difference how many peaks you reach if there was no pleasure in the climb.

There are films that I don't like, and then someone will come up to me and say it's their favorite movie. The movies belong to the people. You make them and you put them out. For me, I love the process of making films. For me, my favorite film is always my next one.

If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the good in doingit?

Ultimately, every great endeavor consists of many little steps.

Any carefully planned thing destroys the creativity. You can't think your way through a story; you have to live it. So, you don't build a story; you allow it to explode.

You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.

The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are.

A huge number of people are going through the process of awakening, some in the early stages, some in later stages, and it's wonderful to see.

As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.

You build a successful life a day at a time.

I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun.

Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

I write quickly with a sense of urgency. I don't edit myself out of existence, meaning I'll try to write 50 or 60 pages before I start rereading, revising and editing. That just helps with my confidence.

To arrive at abstraction, it is always necessary to begin with a concrete reality.

There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

I've never sat down and thought about the difference between plot and theme. To me, that's never been important.

My little notebooks were beginnings - they were the ground into which I dropped the seed... I would work in this way when I was out in the crowds, then put the stuff together at home.

Success is not something you achieve, conquer, climb, or complete. Success is a process; it's a way of life.

I would like to manage to prevent people from ever seeing how a picture of mine has been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion.

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.

Success is processional. It's the result of a series of small disciplines that lead us into habitual patterns of success that no longer require consistent will or effort.

A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.

The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.

I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

You let the story cool off and then, instead of rewriting it, you relive it.

Leadership is developed daily, not in a day.

I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five hours.

I like to write without being stoned. I like to have a hit or two and then go punch up the writing. I just see different things and hear different things. But it's nice to be working from the base that I wrote originally and then come to it with a little buzz. I can have a little wine from time to time. I have a hit from time to time, but those are the only things I do.

Inspiration exists, but you have to find it working.

So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action-just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.

If a story isn't working, I'm simply unable to finish it. That's what usually tells me something is wrong.

Most people who want to get ahead do it backward. They think, 'I'll get a bigger job, then I'll learn how to be a leader.' But showing leadership skill is how you get the bigger job in the first place. Leadership isn't a position, it's a process.

The goal has its importance. But the doing is what is truly fulfilling. Every enthusiastic person has a goal that may be important, but the doing is intensely fulfilling, and it is the essence of enthusiasm.

When I get on the dance floor, my purpose in being on the dance floor is not to end up at another spot when the music stops. The purpose of the dance is to enjoy every step along the way.

Success doesn't come instantly. Neither does the ability to lead.

All goals apart from the means are illusions; becoming is a denial of being.

Write drunk; edit sober.

The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient ... But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.

Writing can be described in two verbs: Throw up and clean up.

What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.

You must never name the goal. You must never tell us the target you're hitting for. You must automatically go toward it without ever naming it.

We overestimate the event and underestimate the process. Every fulfilled dream occurred because of dedication to the process.

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book.

Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.

I don't practice anything. I spend time looking over ideas and then just get out and do it.

One day you are drinking the wine, and they next day you are picking the grapes.

Writing a book is an adventure.

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.