Top 50 Stephen Nachmanovitch Quotes (2025 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. “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

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. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

13. “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

14. “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

15. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

17. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

19. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

22. “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

23. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

25. “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

26. “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

27. “Structure ignites spontaneity.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

28. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

30. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

32. “If your mind is empty, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

34. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

36. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

38. “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

39. “Technique itself springs from play, because we can acquire technique only by the practice of practice, by persistently experimenting and playing with our tools and testing their limits and resistances.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

40. “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

41. “The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

43. “These interreflecting themes, the prerequisites of creation, are playfulness, love, concentration, practice, skill, using the power of limits, using the power of mistakes, risk, surrender, patience, courage, and trust. Creativity is a harmony of opposite tensions, as encapsulated in our opening idea of lila, or divine play.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

44. “Whispered words can be devastatingly effective.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

45. “Artwork is not thought up in consciousness and then, as a separate phase, executed by the hand. The hand surprises us creates and solves problems on its own. Often, enigmas that baffle our brains are dealt with easily, unconsciously, by the hand.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

47. “For art to appear, we have to disappear.”

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

48. “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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

50. “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