Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide

‘Sorry this is such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.’

if you have zero expectations at the start, you can hardly fail. And you’re already priming your unconscious…

That’s the great thing about working in comedy. If the audience doesn’t laugh, you know you’ve got it wrong.

Your thoughts follow your mood

the language of the unconscious is not verbal. It’s like the language of dreams.

Writing is easy. Writing well is difficult.

For example, when you eat, the bit where the fork returns empty to your plate isn’t a failure. It’s just part of the eating process.

what you do at this point, when this new idea of yours has become pretty clear, is to bring in your critical, analytical, fact-seeking mind to assess it.

the longer you sit there, the more your mind slows and calms down and settles. Once that starts to happen you can begin to focus on the problem you’ve chosen to think about.