All About Us

In 1986 I wanted to make a Christmas gift calendar for my wife using Print Shop and my Apple //GS computer. I decided to make a weekly calendar with a motherly/homey quotation at the top of each page. Browsing through a copy of "The Shorter Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" I became intrigued with quotations about creativity.

I soon amassed several thousand quotations, and began reading more about the creative process. I was intrigued by books like "A Whack on the Side of The Head: How to Unlock Your Mind for Innovation" by Roger Von Oech. However, it was in reading his sequel entitled "A Kick in the Seat of the Pants" that I made a creative connection that my collection of quotations could be used to illustrate components of the creativity process.

After more research, including "Pathfinders" by Gail Sheehy, I adopted a creative process, called Creative Quotations, based on five steps/components -- Foraging, Reflecting, Adopting, Nurturing, and Knuckling Down. Those five terms, while admittedly a bit out of the ordinary, spell FRANK. This has become my way to personalize the creative process. In fact, I credit my ten years of survival s a project manager in Africa in part to my personalization of the creative process, and its application to project management.

Several years later, the Internet provided a way to share my quotation collection to a broader audience. via CreativeQuotations.com and BeMoreCreative.com. That also eventually led to the creation of this website where quotations on a selected topic are combined with links for purchasing products related to that topic. The CreativeHardwareStore.com, for example, was inspired by the quotation that "Anyone can look for history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store." --Robert Wieder.

I invite you to browse this website while "thinking, working and living more creatively." And please keep on the lookout for connections along the way that may inspire your personal creativity!

-FRANK