If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creativity arises when one is passionate about their work and strives for excellence.
In this quote, John Updike emphasizes that creativity is not reserved for a select few but is a quality that emerges in everyday actions when an individual is invested in doing their best. It suggests that the attitude and care one puts into their activities transform them into creative endeavors, highlighting the importance of engagement and dedication in any task.
Themes
CreativityActivityPassionEngagementExcellence
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing one's passions, this quote can inspire individuals to care deeply about their work.
More from John Updike
All quotes βDost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. _x000D_ _x000D_ Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John UpdikeRead
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
John UpdikeRead
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
John UpdikeRead
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
John UpdikeRead
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
John UpdikeRead
Similar quotes
Making words rhyme for a living is one of the great joys of my life... That's a superpower I've been very conscious of developing. I started at the same level as everybody else, and then I just listened to more music and talked to myself until it was an actual superpower I could pull out on special occasions.
Lin-Manuel MirandaRead
For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.
Umberto EcoRead
Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise.
Terry PratchettRead
Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share.
Henri MatisseRead
All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.
John RuskinRead
Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story that's next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right. In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you can't. I mean by that the good short stories like Chekhov wrote. That's why I rate that second - it's because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless. There's less room in it for trash.
William FaulknerRead