What inspires a creative genius? Dive into the lives, experiences, and stories from 10 of the best biographies from history’s most creative minds.
Have you ever wondered how Leonardo da Vinci became so innovative or how Hayao Miyazaki was able to create such engaging animated worlds? There are so many different types of creatives and ways of living creatively. By reading the stories and experiences of past creative lives, you can learn interesting habits to support your own.
For more inspiration from creative minds, check out these quotes on creativity.
“Creativity is just connecting things.”
―
Steve Jobs By Walter Isaacson is a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries. Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years, as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues, there’s a lot to learn about this creative mind.
“To cease to think creatively is to cease to live.”
―
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is an unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790. This autobiography is an important historical document and has remained popular and insightful for more than 200 years. Franklin’s account of his life is divided into four parts, reflecting the different periods at which he wrote them.
Part one was penned while Franklin was in England in July-August of 1771. Part Two in 1784 while living in France. Part Three, dating from 1788-89, was written when Franklin was in his eighties after a long and distinguished international career. Part Four and the final section was written when Franklin was in poor health in the last few months of his life.
“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better.”
―
This engrossing biography of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo reveals a woman of extreme magnetism and originality, an artist whose sensual vibrancy came straight from her own experiences: her childhood near Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution; a devastating accident at age eighteen that left her crippled and unable to bear children; her tempestuous marriage to muralist Diego Rivera and intermittent love affairs with men as diverse as Isamu Noguchi and Leon Trotsky; her association with the Communist Party; her absorption in Mexican folklore and culture; and her dramatic love of spectacle.
“Invention is the most important product of man’s creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.”
―
This classic autobiography by Nikola Tesla is about the progressive development of a man that was often called the prophet of the electronic age. Innovation was his most important belief, with research that laid much of the groundwork for modern electrical and communication systems. He led a life of purpose to master the mind and harness the forces of nature for human needs.
His accomplishments include the development of the alternating-current electrical system, radio, the Tesla coil transformer, wireless transmission, and fluorescent lighting. The visionary scientist speaks for himself in this autobiography, originally published in 1919 as a six-part series in Electrical Experimenter magazine. Tesla recounts his boyhood in Croatia, his schooling and work in Europe, his collaboration with Thomas Edison, and his subsequent research. This memoir offers fascinating insights into one of the most creative and great minds of modern science.
“The World is but a canvas to the imagination.”
―
In another powerful autobiography from a creative mind, Henry David Thoreau reflects on life, politics, and society in his masterpiece, Walden. A must-read for anyone wishing to live deliberately. Walden is a reflection on the simplicity and beauty of a life in nature.
In 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a cabin by Walden Pond, Massachusetts. Intending to immerse himself in nature and distance himself from the distractions of social life. Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau’s other goals. The project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. The work can be described as a personal declaration of independence, a social experiment, a voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and a manual for self-reliance. Thoreau sustained his retreat for over two years but compressed his book into a single calendar year. He uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development.
Despite its slow beginnings, critics would later praise it as an American classic. Over the years, it has continued to grow in popularity and has even been adapted into a video game.
“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
―
From New York Times bestseller Walter Isaacson comes another inspiring biography of a creative mind, Leonardo da Vinci.
Based on thousands of pages from his notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson reveals Leonardo in a narrative that connects his art to his science. Explore his passion for curiosity, careful observation, delight at combining diverse passions, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy.
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
―
The Year of Magical Thinking is an account from one of America’s most iconic writers, Joan Didion, about the year following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. It’s a portrait of a marriage and a life, in good times and bad, that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. Upon release, it won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography.
The book begins several days before Christmas 2003 when John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, and then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year’s Eve–the Dunnes were sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.
Didion explains that this powerful book is an attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”
“The problem with listening, of course, is that we don’t. There’s too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it’s a constant racket. In the same way, we don’t see, and in the same way, we don’t feel, we don’t touch, we don’t taste.“
―
Philip Glass has, almost single-handedly, crafted the dominant sound of late-twentieth-century classical music. In his memoir, Words Without Music, he shares his experiences of creative fusion when life so magically merged with art and what helped shape his creative consciousness. Incredible insights for all creative minds, Words Without Music affirms the power of music to change the world.
“The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos.”
―
A thirtieth‑century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red‑haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit—what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises.
Miyazakiworld: A Life In Art by Susan Napier is the story of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s life and work, including his significant impact on Japan and the world. Japanese culture and animation scholar Susan Napier explores the life and art of this extraordinary Japanese filmmaker to provide a definitive account of his oeuvre. Napier insightfully illuminates the multiple themes crisscrossing his work, from empowered women to environmental nightmares to utopian dreams. She creates an unforgettable portrait of a man whose art challenged Hollywood dominance and ushered in a new chapter of global popular culture.
“To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.”
―
Georgia O’Keeffe’s personal mystique is as intriguing and enduring as her bold, brilliant canvases. Portrait of an Artist is the first full account of her exceptional life. From her girlhood and early days as a controversial art teacher to her discovery by the pioneering photographer of the New York avant-garde, Alfred Stieglitz, to her seclusion in the New Mexico desert where she lived until her death at ninety-eight.
From the recollections of more than one hundred of O’Keeffe’s friends, relatives, colleagues, and neighbors as well as published and previously unpublished historical records and letters are used to provide the first full-length biography and in-depth study of the celebrated painter’s life.
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
