Here are a few quotes from Fred Rogers, host of children’s show Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, on creativity from the book You Are Special.

There would be no art and there would be no science if human beings had no desire to create. And if we had everything we ever need or wanted, we would have no reason for creating anything. So, at the root of all art and all science there exists a gap – a gap between what the world is like and what the human creator wishes and hopes for it to be like. Our unique way of bridging the gap in each of our lives seems to me to be the essence of the reason for human creativity.

When people help us to feel good about who we are, they are helping us love the meaning of what we create in this life.

Play is the real work of childhood.

Grown-ups are often puzzled by children’s play because we don’t fully understand, but a child needs the freedom to play what we don’t always understand.

Some toys make children conform to them. They are not objects that children could make conform to their own fantasies and feelings. The time spent making those toys work means less time spent in the kind of play young children need most — pay of their own invention.  There is a big difference between toys that we can adapt to our own inner needs and toys that make us adapt to them.

I’ve often hesitated in beginning a project because I’ve thought, “It’ll never turn out to be even remotely like the good idea I have as I start.” I could “just” feel how good it could be. But I decided, for the present, I would create the best way I know how and accept the ambiguities.

Often the creative urge, once we express it, brings real relief in whatever form it takes. We have an inner sense that we can make what is into what we feel could and should be.

Imagining something may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into inventions.