Stephen Nachmanovitch Quotes

41 Sourced Quotes

Creative living, or the life of a creator, seems like a leap into the unknown only because "normal life" is rigid and traumatized.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
There are no prescriptive solutions, no grand designs for grand problems. Life's solutions lie in the minute particulars involving more and more individual people daring to create their own life and art, daring to listen to the voice within their deepest, original nature, and deeper still, the voice within the earth.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
If form is mechanically applied, it may indeed result in work that is conventional, if not pedantic or stupid. But form used well can become the very vehicle of freedom, of discovering the creative surprises that liberate mind-at-play.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Surrender means cultivating a comfortable attitude toward not knowing, being nurtured by the mystery of moments that are dependably surprising, ever fresh.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
If I "try" to play, I fail; if I force the play, I crush it; if I race, I trip. Any time I stiffen or brace myself against some error or problem, the very act of bracing would cause the problem to occur. The only road to strength is vulnerability.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
If a creative person has a sense of humor, a sense of style and a certain amount of stubbornness, he finds a way to do what he needs to in spite of the obstacles.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Brahms once remarked that the mark of an artist is how much he throws away. Nature, the great creator, is always throwing things away. A frog lays several million eggs at a sitting. Only a few dozen of these become tadpoles, and only a few of those become frogs. We can let imagination and practice be as profligate as nature.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Working within the limits of the medium forces us to change our own limits. Improvisation is not breaking with forms and limitations just to be 'free,' but using them as the very means of transcending ourselves.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
If we split practice from the real thing, neither one of them will be very real.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Every moment of life is unique-a kiss, a sunset, a dance, a joke. None will ever recur in quite the same way. Each happens only once in the history of the universe.

Stephen Nachmanovitch