The genuine creator creates something that has a life of its own, something that can exist and function without him. This is true not only of the writer, artist and scientist, but of creators in other fields.With the noncreative it is the other way around: in whatever they do, they arrange things so that they themselves become indispensable.

Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer (ed. HarperCollins Publishers, 1982)