ABSTRACT
The French symbolist poet, Paul Valéry, was fascinated by the nature of creative processes. He rose before dawn each morning, and reflected upon the interior maneuvers of his own mind, and he recorded his thoughts in notebooks, which now fill a shelf in the Princeton University library, affording a unique record of the introspections of a great poet and thinker. On one occasion he met Einstein, and during their conversation asked him whether he, too, kept a notebook to record his thoughts. Einstein replied that he did not. He had a good idea so seldom, he explained, that he had no need to write it down in order to remember it. Indeed, some creators have just a few great ideas, others have many good ideas, but most of us have just a few bad ideas.
