Time. It's not enough to create space, you have to create your space for a specific period of time...And it's only by having a specific moment when your space starts and an equally specific moment when your space stops that you can seal yourself off from the every day closed mode in which we all habitually operate.

The most creative professionals always played with a problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it, because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven't solved a problem...And so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.

I always find that if two (or more) of us throw ideas backwards and forwards I get to more interesting and original places than I could have ever have gotten to on my own.

In fact, the only thing from the research that I could tell you about how to be creative is the sort of childhood that you should have had..

The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen. The feeling that whatever happens, it's ok. So you cannot be playful if you're frightened that moving in some direction will be “wrong” — something you “shouldn't have done.”

As we all know, it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking.

You can't become playful and therefore creative if you're under your usual pressures, because to cope with them you've got to be in the closed mode...You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed.

humor is an essential part of spontaneity, an essential part of playfulness, an essential part of the creativity that we need to solve problems, no matter how ‘serious’ they may be.

The reason why it is futile for me to talk about creativity is that it simply cannot be explained...It is literally inexplicable.