Art In Bloom
For years, I’ve wanted to go to Art in Bloom, an event where florists create arrangements inspired by the collection at the North Carolina Museum of Art. I finally made it this year and was so inspired by the beautiful creations and the way art inspires more art.
I’ve wanted to share some of my photos but couldn't figure out what I wanted to say alongside them. A friend suggested sharing them with some of my favorite quotes on creativity, and I loved the idea. I’ve collected quotes for years and years: somewhere in the attic, I still have a tattered blue spiral notebook I started my freshman year of high school. It’s filled with quotes and song lyrics (had to save all those potential AIM away messages somewhere, right?). I have shelves of books with quotes highlighted and underlined. There are stacks of index cards in my office with quotes and quotes scribbled in the margins of planners and workshop notes. I’ve got Google docs with quotes, notes on my phone, and photos of pages of books with quotes I didn’t want to forget. Maybe one day, I’ll figure out a good way to organize all of these quotes. But for today, here are a few I love—and happened to stumble on while I was working on this post—alongside some of my favorite photos from Art in Bloom 2023.
“The essence of our work—whether the forming of a shape or a sentence, a dance or a novel—comes from the same willingness to fall, to fail. To surrender.”
- Dani Shapiro (From Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life)
“We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are, and what our relationship is to life and death, what is essential, and what, despite the arbitrariness of falling beams, will not burn.”
- Madeleine L’Engle (From A Circle of Quiet)
“Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery.”
- Julia Cameron (From The Artist’s Way)
“It is for the artist to decide which detours to take, which details to wake up, and which are better left asleep. Therefore the path to perfection must be trod carefully and with great wisdom. You are drawing the map as you inch along.”
- Phillipe Petit (from Creativity: The Perfect Crime)
“Some stories imagined in this ancient place rise above the others; they ascend from the towers, from the quiet libraries and single rooms, from the museums and the cobblestone streets. Some of these stories become legends. Myths. Tales that are as much a part of us as our bones.”
- Patti Callahan (From Once Upon a Wardrobe)
“We live in a culture obsessed with final products, but the middle matters greatly. The showing up, the discipline, the putting your butt in the chair - this is where the magic happens. The more we show up to our creativity, even when we don't feel like it, the more we start to view all of life as a creative act.”
- Ashlee Gadd (from Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood)
“Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.”
- Celeste Ng (From Our Missing Hearts)
"Magic is always impossible," said the magician. "It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it is magic.”
- Kate DiCamillo (From The Magician’s Elephant)
“When we begin things, we can’t possibly know how they will end. Everything we plan is built on guesses and hopes, never on certainty. It’s a wonder anybody ever starts anything.”
- Mary Laura Philpott (from Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives)
“Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t—and in fact, you’re not supposed to—know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.”
- Anne Lamott (From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)
“Art calls on us to put aside everything we think we know and enter the world unarmed, trusting only art to keep us safe.”
- Erin McGraw (From Being Smarter Than We Are: On the Short Story in A Syllable of Water)
“One holy way of mending the world is to sing, to write, to paint, to weave new worlds.”
- Andrew Peterson (From Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making)
*Book links are affiliate—that means if you make a purchase, I may earn a few extra pennies at no cost to you!
Have any favorite creativity quotes of your own? I’d love for you to share them in the comments!