Quotes About Inspiration

If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.

A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.

Someday, when he was good enough, he would ask her to write them in a book and let him do all the pictures.

those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child.

Jess drew the way some people drink whiskey.

Jess drew the way some people drink whiskey. The peace would start at the top of his muddled brain and seep down through his tired and tensed-up body.

Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn't there, so he must go for both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.

Katherine Paterson

I just can't get the poetry of the trees, he said.

The basic task of education is the care and feeding of the imagination.

The very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.

If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

I had no study in those days, not even a desk or file or bookcase to call mine alone....It might have happened sooner [the writing of work worthy of publication] had I had a room of my own and fewer children, but somehow I doubt it. For as I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who took away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.

My dearest Friend, As I am urging our students to write a note to their mothers away from Shanghai, I think of you as a mother to so many of our Chinese girls. The greatness and depth of your love only God knows how to measure and reward you. Thinking of you has always been an inspiration to me. I love you. Lovingly yours, Tszo-Sing Chen

Leslie was more than his friend. She was his other, more exciting self - his way to Terabithia and all the worlds beyond.

To give children the words they need is to give them life, growth and refreshment

Being in love makes every morning worth getting up for.

When I have all of Manhattan to choose from I tend to dither, to hold out for perfection—but as any poet can testify, limits encourage both inspiration and decisiveness.

The way a crane creates, then erases itself, from the skyline. He'd been referring to how I, as a copywriter, created R.H. Macy's, but the same metaphor might easily have been applied to how I, as a mother, was creating my son.

Can I let you in on a remarkable secret? I find that the more ideas I let myself have, the more ideas I have.

but as any poet can testify, limits encourage both inspiration and decisiveness.

For me, a peaceful atmosphere devoid of noise and distractions is absolutely the worst place for poetry, likely to wind me up in a doomed attempt to stare down a blank page. My funny old brain, like those of many poets, has always done its best work sideways, seeking out tricky enjambments and surprising slant rhymes to craft lines capable of pulling their own weight.

A motto of mine had long been, "When the heart isn't in it, all zest in the job is destroyed

Most people assume that a muse is a creature of perfect beauty, poise and grace. Like the creatures from Greek mythology. They're wrong. In fact, there should be a marked absence of perfection in a muse--a gaping hole between what she is and what she might be. The ideal muse is a woman whose rough edges and contradictions drive you to fill in the blanks of her character. She is the irritant to your creativity. A remarkable possibility, waiting to be formed.