Quotes About Inspiration

We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer…. Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best.

They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.

I light my candle from their torches.

If heaven be so fair,the sun so fair, how much fairer shall He be that made them fair? For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures, proportionally the maker of them is seen.

Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people's laundry. I got into it originally while trying to break an addiction to candy. I kicked candy and now seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my brain instead of my teeth.

I had continued jotting down good lines—once the eyes and ears are awakened to the possibilities they can't be put back to sleep...

It's amazing how much funny stuff there is.... [A] river of rich comedic milk is flowing across the land, and as fast as I skim off the cream more cream appears.... I may be doomed to wade around forever in other people's pith. Not that it's such a bad life.

[W]hen I hear or read a good line I can hardly wait to tell it to somebody else...

Getting caught is the mother of invention.

creative output depends on creative input.

Some have suggested that in using the latter his inspiration may have been the Lena, a river in eastern Siberia.

But it was the inspirational power of his pamphlet of 1902 that elevated him in the eyes of many and made him the central figure of an actual movement.

This novel furnished inspiration for several generations of Russian radicals. That it furnished inspiration also for Vladimir Ulyanov is well attested to by, among other things, the fact that he entitled his own revolutionary treatise of 1902—the most important of all his works in historical influence—What Is to Be Done?

My first love is art, and I see a lot of things in an artistic way.

I've always taken my love of children from my father. He was a children magnet. Suddenly, having my first child hit home what my dad went through.

I really wanted there to be something in my life that I enjoy just for the beauty of it.

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

I drew on Under a Green Sky and The Medea Hypothesis, by the reliably pessimistic Peter Ward

If you need inspiration, find the part of the target that most irritates you and use it as a springboard for some therapeutic conflict. The more real your cruelty, the more effective it is.

His mind, he decided, worked best when he had several different projects at hand, allowing him to build all kinds of connections between them.

Work at what connects to you emotionally and ideas will come to you.

Your most creative years are generally in your late twenties and on into your forties. You can learn what you need through books, your own practice, and occasional advice from others, but the process is hit-and-miss.