Split Quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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…

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

Many musicians are fabulously skilled at playing the black dots on the printed page, but mystified by how the dots got there in the…

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

In the art of teaching, we recognize that ideas and insights need to cook over a period of time. Sometimes the student who is…

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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…

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

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

— Stephen Nachmanovitch

Brahms once remarked that the mark of an artist is how much he throws away. Nature, the great creator, is always throwing things away.…

— Stephen Nachmanovitch