Creators Quotes

“Creativity, I believe, is inherent in all of us. We are the progeny of almighty God. God is defined in many ways: all-powerful, all-wise, and all-seeing; everlasting; the lawgiver; the ultimate source of love, beauty, justice, and happiness. Most of all, he is the creator. He created the universe, and those who inhabit it; and, in creating us, he made us in his own image, so that his personality and capacities, however feebly, are reflected in our minds, bodies, and immortal spirits. So we are, by our nature, creators as well.”
― Paul Johnson, Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney

“Two seventeenth-century Bachs, identical twins and both of course musicians, were so alike, especially when they chose to wear similar clothes, that even their wives could not tell them apart, and they could indulge in occasional wife swapping without their spouses’ noticing. Their playing, too, was indistinguishable. One of these twins, Ambrosius, was the father of Johann Sebastian Bach. 2”
― Paul Johnson, Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney

“Chaucer saw French and Italian poetry not so much as models to imitate but as verbal shop windows from which he could steal words that as yet had no English equivalents. He thus added over 1,000 words to our language—that is, these words cannot be found in earlier writers.21 They included these: jubilee, administration, secret, voluptuousness, novelty, digestion, persuasion, erect, moisture, galaxy, philosophical, policy, tranquillity. These are mostly polysyllabic, weighty words, used by scholars and professional men.”
― Paul Johnson, Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney

“When he realized that his sexual potency had gone, he said bitterly to his son Claude: “I am old and you are young. I wish you were dead.” His last years were punctuated by family quarrels over his money. His demise was followed by many years of ferocious litigation. Marie-Thérèse hanged herself. His widow shot herself. His eldest child died of alcoholism. Some of his mistresses died in want. Picasso, an atheist transfixed by primitive superstitions, who had his own barber so that no one could collect clippings of his hair and so “get control” of him by magic,”
― Paul Johnson, Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney

“By 1455 Gutenberg had completed and published the world’s first printed book, a Bible, and the importance of the event was immediately recognized. The impact on knowledge was huge because the first encyclopedia was published in 1460, soon to be followed by the first Bible in German—vernacular works formed a high proportion of the earliest books.6”
― Paul Johnson, Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney