Quotes About Inspiration

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

They were not permitted to so much as knock upon the door to the room in which he thought and wrote about art, but ted hadn't found a way to keep them from prowling outside it, ghostly feral creatures drinking from a pond at moonlight, their bare feet digging in the carpet....

This vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life.

You can only write regularly if you're willing to write badly. You can't write regularly and well. One should accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.

I looked down at the city. Its extravagance felt wasteful, like gushing oil or some other precious thing Bennie was hoarding for himself, using it up so no one else could get any. I thought: if I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

It made me alert, like someone had scrubbed mint all over my skin. I'd walk into that stinking, miserable prison and for the next three hours, a wise and beautiful woman would float out of the wreckage of my life, and her words and thoughts and tiniest movements were precious.

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

She says, My job is to show you a door you can open. And she taps the top of her head. It leads wherever you want it to go, she says.

People had to do something to shake things up or they would've keeled over from misery and boredom. So Christ came to dinner. Witches and goblins were hiding in corners. People looked at the sky and saw angels. And my idea--my, my...plan, my-- Mick: Mission. He didn't pause in his sanding. My mission is to bring some of that back. Let people be tourists of their own imaginations.

We've lost the ability to make things up. We've farmed out that job to the entertainment industry, and we sit around and drool on ourselves while they do it for us.

I save up those words and later on I open up the notebook where I'm keeping the journal Holly told us all to keep and I write them down one by one. And for some reason that puts me in a good mood, like money in the bank.

Technology has afforded ordinary people a chance to glow in the cosmos of human achievement.

a higher power touched our mother's head and said: Stop what you're doing! Two little girls are waiting to be born, and you need to have them right away, because the world is desperate for their brightness.

Then winter ended and spring came, and I thought, even if I don't believe there's a poem in anything anymore, maybe I'll write a story. A lot of people do that when they can't seem to figure out who or what they love. It might be an oversimplification, but they seem to write poetry when they do know.

You can only write regularly if you're willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.

I thought: If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel.

I want words that are still alive, that have a pulse. Hot words, people! Give me the bullet, not the casing — fire it right in my chest. I'll die gladly for some fresh language.

If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

If I could imagine the past with compassion, why couldn't I breathe hope into an imagined future?

Anybody can buy. It takes an artist to shop.

Which is to say that we all have dragons to slay in life. This one is mine. I hope that doing so will provide a model to others on how to find the bravery to be true to oneself, even if it means doing something that seems impossible.

It makes me wonder just how many supposedly brave people in the world are just men and women trying to imitate someone more courageous than themselves.

I am lucky to have had an attentive, curious and loving dad and heart-smart, down-to-earth, gifted mother. They changed the outlooks of their own lives and have never forgotten the people and organizations that helped them dream bigger than their circumstances should have allowed.