Ruminating on the the necessity of both reading and writing, so as not to confine ourselves to either, Seneca in one of his Epistles, advised that we gather ideas, sift them, and combine them into a new creation.

We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in; these bees, as our Vergil says,

Pack close the flowing honey, And swell their cells with nectar sweet.

Read more:

http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/07/seneca-on-combinatorial-creativity/

“Combinatory play,” said Einstein, “seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”

Ruminating on the the necessity of both reading and writing, so as not to confine ourselves to either, Seneca in one of his Epistles, advised that we gather ideas, sift them, and combine them into a new creation.

We must digest it; otherwise it will merely enter the memory and not the reasoning power. Let us loyally welcome such foods and make them our own, so that something that is one may be formed out of many elements, just as one number is formed of several elements whenever, by our reckoning, lesser sums, each different from the others, are brought together. This is what our mind should do: it should hide away all the materials by which it has been aided, and bring to light only what it has made of them. Even if there shall appear in you a likeness to him who, by reason of your admiration, has left a deep impress upon you, I would have you resemble him as a child resembles his father, and not as a picture resembles its original; for a picture is a lifeless thing.