'I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning ... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.'

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

'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.'

Martha Graham's philosophy of creativity

'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.'

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.'

A quote by Florence Nightingale

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

Quotes by designer Gianni Versace

'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.'

'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.'

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

'Life's short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands, and buts.'

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

A quote by Howard Hughes

'An idea is salvation by imagination.'

The legendary jazz beef of Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis

A quote by Magic Johnson

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

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

A quote by award-winning actor Tom Hanks

The man who defined the look of jazz

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

A quote by Lauren Bacall

'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.'

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.'

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

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

'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.'

Music was a profound inspiration for Basquiat

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

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.'

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

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

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

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

How legendary artists overcame creative block

'Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.'

'If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.'

'The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us.'

'We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.'

A quote by Whitney Houston

'You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.'

'In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success—if you are willing to learn from it.'

'I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.'

'A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside.' - Ella Fitzgerald

Listen to a jazz composition triggered by the New York City Subway

Sleep research published in 2021 confirmed that there is a 'creative sweet spot' when people are drifting off to sleep, and that if they wake up at that point to work, it can boost their creative problem-solving.