“Sometimes a simple question could have a complicated answer.”

Source: Kiss of the Night

Source: Storm Front

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Enrico Bombieri, cited in: Leonard F. Koziol (2014), The Myth of Executive Functioning. p. 1

Source: An Ideal Husband

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Stone of Farewell (1990), Chapter 8, “On Sikkihoq’s Back” (p. 188).

Statement in Mainliner (July 1977), as quoted in Creativity and the writing process (1982) by Olivia Bertagnolli, p. 182; also partly quoted in Survival Skills for Managers (1981) by Marlene Wilson, p. 19
Variant: Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.
As quoted in The Evaluation and Treatment of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (1999) by Nils R. Varney and Richard J. Roberts, p. 303
Context: My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like and apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable. Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

The Black Coat (2013)