When battered by chatter…

clipped from abriefmessage.com Socialist writer and textile artist William Morris said, “You can't have art without resistance in the materials.” Blessed and burdened with the most malleable medium in human history, we are overwhelmed by a surfeit of dross, battered by chatter. There are benefits to gain by adding, in the form of constraints, some resistance to the materials.

This comes from A Brief Message.com, where every post is limited to 200 words or fewer (they say "less" but it's still a cool concept). Constraints – real or self-imposed – stimulate creativity.