John Lennon on the Satisfying Difficulty of Excellence and the Vital Role of Invisible Incubation in the Creative Process

“Every song I’ve ever written has been absolute torture… except for the ten or so songs the gods give you and that come out of nowhere.”

“I carry my thoughts about with me for a long time, sometimes a very long time, before I set them down,” Beethoven, having revolutionized music with his stubborn devotion to making unexampled sound, told a young composer in reflecting on the role of incubation in his creative process. Two centuries after his death, psychology — a science not even a glimmer on ...