Quotes About Inspiration

What was Art, after all, if not simply giving out what you have inside you? ... Wasn't a bunch of carrots, yes, a bunch of carrots, studied directly and painted simply, personally, as you see it yourself, as good as any of the run-of-the-mill, made-to-measure Ecole des Beaux-Arts stuff, painted with tobacco juice? The day was not far off when one solitary, original carrot might be pregnant with revolution! (35)

it was in that uncertain state of mind that he began to sketch her face (12)

Todas las mujeres conciben ideas, pero no todas conciben hijos

Emily Brightwell

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.

She started writing notes and keeping them under her pillow, and then she started writing them on her pillowcase, hoping they would help her have better dreams. And if she couldn't sleep, she could just read them and be reminded of something so stunningly beautiful that her heart would swell and her bones would sigh and for just a second, the world would not seem like it was going to crush her.

The subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived.

I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

Shall earth no more inspire thee, Thou lonely dreamer now? Since passion may not fire thee, Shall nature cease to bow?

Some say once a word is said it's dead. I say it just begins to live that day.

every breath from the hills so full of life, that it seemed whoever respired it, though dying, might revive.

Who of us knows just why we do what we do, much less another's whys, or what we're after? Art is not like that; cut and dried and hit-at like a bull's eye and done for a reason and explained away by this or that motive. It's climbing and striving for something always beyond.

More than ever was I convinced that the old way of seeing was inadequate to express this big country of ours, her depth, her height, her unbounded wildness, silences too strong to be broken - nor could ten million cameras, through their mechanical boxes, ever show real Canada. It had to be sensed, passed through live minds, sensed and loved.

Professor, you are very hard on that young Canadian girl! Hard? The Professor shrugged, spread his palms. Art - the girl has 'makings.' It takes red-hot fury to dig 'em up. If I'm harsh it's for her own good. More often than not worth while things hurt. Art's worth while.

Why must these people go on, and on, copying, copying fragments of old relics from extinct churches, and old tombs as though those were the best that could ever be, and it would be a sacrilege to beat them? Why didn't they want to out-do the best, instead of copying, always copying what had been done?

They already realized possibilities that we couldn't see. They heard the music and designed inner worlds out of what they dreamed....

Emily Dickenson

The possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination.

I'll tell you how the sun rose, a ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran. The hills untied their bonnets, The bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, That must have been the sun!

The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.

Art is a house that tries to be haunted.

To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie— True Poems flee—

To travel far, there is no better ship than a book.

La esperanza es esa cosa con plumas que se posa en el alma y canta sin parar.