The imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.

Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order.

Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It's almost like magic.

It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry -- if they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere, how to keep on working until the work is done. Woody Allen famously declared that eighty percent of success is showing up. NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) teaches kids how to show up again and again.

By the age of 3, children from wealthier households hear, on average, about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. The ratio is reversed in households on welfare.

The inconsistency of genius is a consistent theme of creativity.

Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.

Knowledge can be a subtle curse. When we learn about the world, we also learn all the reasons why the world cannot be changed. We get used to our failures and imperfections. We become numb to the possibilities of something new.

People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.

Harlow would later write, If monkeys have taught us anything, it's that you've got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.

The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field.

We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.

Rejection process is not fun. It's the red pen on the page, the discarded sketch, sometimes is the only way forward.

For too long, we've assumed that there is a single template for human nature, which is why we diagnose most deviations as disorders. But the reality is that there are many different kinds of minds. And that's a very good thing.

We see them most when we are o nnthe outside looking in.

Every creative story is different. And yet every creative story is the same: There was nothing, now there is something. It's almost like magic.

New ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time.

Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories.

And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.