'You will never feel proud of your work if you find no joy within it; your best work is always joyful work.'

- Stevie Wonder (1950-present)

'Everybody has talent and it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in.'

- George Lucas (1944-present)

Martha Graham's philosophy of creativity

The influential choreographer and dancer once said that creative people will never be satisfied with their work. Instead, "there is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

'Because of phones, we always have the ability to jump out of ourselves. But unless you learn how to be in your head, you’ll never learn how to create.'

- Songwriter and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980-present)

Watch an interview with Philip Glass about his career and theory of creativity, which he believes needs to be consistently deconstructed and reinvented.

'At every moment, we always have a choice, even if it feels as if we don’t. Sometimes that choice may simply be to think a more positive thought.'

- Singer Tina Turner (1993–2023)

A quote by Florence Nightingale

"Poetry and imagination begin life."

'You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it!'

- Filmmaker Steven Spielberg (1946-present)

Quotes by designer Gianni Versace

"You have to break a barrier every day. Fashion, to me, is born and dies every day."

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

'Follow your enthusiasm. It's something I've always believed in. Find those parts of your life you enjoy the most. Do what you enjoy doing.'

- "Muppets" creator Jim Henson (1936-1990)

Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' changed the genre by pioneering modal jazz

Davis was an adept bebop trumpet player, but he grew tired of the style. With 1959's "Kind of Blue," he pioneered a new style of jazz, called modal jazz, that focused less on improvising on chord progressions and more on open, tone-based expression.

'The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.'

- American musician BB King (1925-2015)

A quote by Howard Hughes

"Do the impossible, because almost everyone has told me my ideas are merely fantasies."

'An idea is salvation by imagination.'

- US architect Frank Lloyd Wright

The legendary jazz beef of Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis

Miles Davis might be the most recognizable name in jazz history, renowned for his landmark albums "Kind of Blue" and "Bitches Brew," and his unceasing artistic experimentation. By the 1980s, however, Davis was a pariah in jazz circles, causing him to set his sights on the poster child for the genre's purists: the much younger Wynton Marsalis. This overview of the rivalry by journalist James Kaplan details the origins—and the apex—of this now legendary beef.

A quote by Magic Johnson

"Celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had."

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.'

- Pablo Picasso

'Do something you really like, and hopefully it pays the rent. As far as I'm concerned, that's success.'

- Musician Tom Petty (1950–2017)

A quote by award-winning actor Tom Hanks

"We are still in the position of waking up and having a choice. Do I make the world better today somehow, or do I not bother?"

The man who defined the look of jazz

Reid Miles designed almost 500 album covers for the Blue Note label, including John Coltrane's "Blue Note" and Freddie Hubbard's "Hub Tones." Check out this history and gallery of his work to see how it created the genre's dominant visual aesthetic.

'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.'

- Albert Einstein

A quote by Lauren Bacall

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."

'I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot ... The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.'

- Author Jack London (1876 - 1916)

Music was a profound inspiration for Basquiat

The prolific artist loved music, obsessing over David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, and numerous jazz figures. Many of his favorites appeared in his paintings, creating a body of work that also acts as a glossary of influences. Below is a 1984 portrait of Max Roach, the jazz drummer. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Read the writing advice of science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury.

'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.'

- Author Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.'

-Inventor and businessman Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

'The best way to make a dream come true is to wake up.'

- Fashion icon Anna Wintour (1949 – present)

'The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire.'

- Astronaut Buzz Aldrin (1930-present)

'Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.'

- Willie Nelson (1933-present)

Sleep is no longer considered a binary state—scientists are seeking to map a variety of liminal states between sleep and waking, including the hypnagogic state associated with boosts of creativity.

'Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.'

- Maya Angelou

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

'Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.'

- Judy Garland

Playing music enhances the creation, storage, and retrieval of memories

Scans of the brains of individuals who play instruments have shown enhanced connectivity between multiple brain regions—visual, auditory, and motor cortices—and the corpus callosum, which connects the two brain hemispheres. These complex connections are strengthened through practice and then used in other activities that involve both logic and creativity. The brains of musicians also appear to give experiences multiple types of memory tags, such as audio, emotional, and conceptual, improving their processing.

'Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.'

- Inventor Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931)

How legendary artists overcame creative block

For most artists, creative block—the unfortunate experience when new ideas suddenly disappear—is inevitable. This Artsy article looks at six artists (including Picasso, Monet, and O’Keeffe) who dealt with creative block and overcame it by experimenting with new media, moving to a new place, or by sheer willpower. It also highlights one artist, Chuck Close, who claims that he never dealt with creative block because he simply viewed his artistic practice as any other job.