Top 50 Stephen Nachmanovitch Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

2. “The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

3. “Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

4. “Fidgeting and boredom are the symptoms of fear of emptiness, which we try to fill up with whatever we can lay our hands on.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

5. “Mastery means responsibility, ability to respond in real time to the need of the moment. Intuitive or inspired living means not just passively hearing the voice, but acting on it.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

6. “You can’t express inspiration without skill.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

7. “With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

9. “Play, creativity, art, spontaneity, all these experiences are their own rewards and are blocked when we perform for reward or punishment, profit or loss.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

10. “Creativity exists more in the searching than in the finding.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

11. “If the art is created with the whole person, then the work will come out whole. Education must teach, reach, and vibrate the whole person rather than merely transfer knowledge.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

12. “We provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other’s pearl making.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

13. “If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

14. “There is not ultimate breakthrough; what we find in the development of a creative life is an open-ended series of provisional breakthroughs. In this journey there is no endpoint, because it is the journey into the soul.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

15. “There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

16. “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

17. “Looking at the creative process is like looking into a crystal: no matter which facet we gaze into, we see all the others reflected.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

18. “If we operate with a belief in long sweeps of time, we build cathedrals; if we operate from fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter, we build ugly shopping malls.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

19. “The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

20. “Every conversation is a form of Jazz. The activity of instantaneous creation is as ordinary to us as breathing.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

21. “The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

22. “Paradoxically, the more you are yourself, the more universal your message. As you develop and individuate more deeply, you break through into deeper layers of the collective consciousness and the collective unconsciousness.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

23. “Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

24. “Play cannot be defined, because in play all definitions slither, dance, combine, break apart, and recombine.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

25. “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

26. “The professionalism of technique and flash of dexterity are more comfortable to be around than raw creative power, hence our society generally rewards virtuoso performers more highly than it rewards original creators.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

27. “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

28. “Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

29. “Structure ignites spontaneity.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

30. “To create, we need both technique and freedom of technique.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

31. “As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business; I am in the surrender business.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

32. “Practice is an ever-fresh, challenging flow of work and play in which we continually test and demolish our own delusions; therefore, it is sometimes painful.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

33. “If we split practice from the real thing, neither one of them will be very real.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

34. “Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

35. “Play is the taproot from which original art springs. It is the raw stuff that the artist channels with all his learning and technique.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

36. “Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

37. “When we are totally faithful to our own individuality, we are actually following a very intricate design. This kind of freedom is the opposite of “just anything”.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

38. “The conception, composition, practice, and performance of a piece of music can blossom in a single moment.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

39. “But somehow, even when we are grown up and “adjusted,” everything we do and are – our handwriting, the vibrato of our voice, the way we handle the bow or breathe into the instrument, our way of using language, the look in our eyes, the pattern of whorling fingerprints on our hand – all these things are symptomatic of our original nature.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

40. “Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

41. “An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

42. “Writing, playing, composing, painting, reading, listening, looking-all require that we submit to being swept away by Eros, to a transformation of self of the kind that happens when we fall in love.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

43. “Play, intrinsically rewarding, doesn’t cost anything; as soon as you put a price on it, it becomes, to some extent, not play.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

44. “Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

45. “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

46. “We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

47. “When we are totally faithful to our own individuality, we are actually following a very intricate design.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

48. “To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create through your technique and not with it.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

49. “Whispered words can be devastatingly effective.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

50. “Every attempt we make is imperfect; yet each one of those imperfect attempts is an occasion for a delight unlike anything else on earth.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch