When I start on a book, I have been thinking about it and making occasional notes for some time... So I have lots of theme, locale, subjects and technical ideas... I don't worry about long periods of not doing anything. I know my subconscious is busy.
Interpretation
Creativity often requires patience, and the subconscious plays a vital role in the process.
This quote emphasizes the importance of the subconscious mind in the creative process. Arthur C. Clarke suggests that even during periods of inactivity, ideas and themes are being developed beneath the surface. He highlights the significance of preparation and thought that occurs before actively writing, suggesting that creativity is not just about immediate action but also about allowing ideas to simmer over time.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a workshop about creative writing to emphasize the value of patience in the creative process.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
You are not now to think what's best to do, _x000D_ As in beginnings, but what must be done, _x000D_ Being thus enter'd; and slip no advantage _x000D_ That may secure you. Let them call it mischief; _x000D_ When it is past, and prosper'd , 'twill be virtue.
When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.
The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.
It is easier for a cannibal to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through the eye of a rich man's needle that it is for any other foreigner to read the terrible German script.
The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign.
Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.
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