Creativity Quote by Robert Motherwell

Motherwell’s line sounds like common sense until you hear the sharper note underneath: identity isn’t merely expressed in conversation, it’s engineered there. Coming from an artist who moved through the high-voltage social worlds of Abstract Expressionism, this isn’t etiquette advice. It’s a theory of how taste, courage, and even the limits of imagination get set. “To a certain degree” is doing the heavy lifting - a painter’s hedge that admits agency while insisting on contamination. No one is fully autonomous; everyone is porous.

The word “generally” matters too. Motherwell isn’t talking about the occasional dinner party, but the steady climate of your days: who you argue with, who you seek approval from, whose boredom you start preempting. In an art scene where manifestos, studio visits, and barroom mythmaking were part of the medium, conversation becomes a kind of invisible apprenticeship. You don’t just pick up ideas; you pick up what counts as an idea, what risks are rewarded, what compromises are quietly normalized.

The subtext is slightly unnerving: your “self” may be less an inner core than a social average. That lands differently now, in an era where “people you converse with” includes the algorithmic crowd - the feed that talks back by shaping what you see. Motherwell’s intent reads as both warning and craft tip: if you want a different mind, choose a different room.