Quotes About Inspiration

You've got to empathize, not sympathize. Take that loose thread. Start to pull. Let the whole thing unravel. Let's start making something stronger. More beautiful.

If you want to build a ship, don't summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean. Antoine de Saint-Exupery A

Peter was that magic person we all meet, if we're lucky, who shows us how to live our lives, and be ourselves.

When we look to the past ... what we are always looking for is whatever is better than we are ... The future cannot teach us because we are the ones who must imagine it.

To read old books is to get an education in possibility for next to nothing.

Anytime you find another alcoholic standing in front of you," he had said, "looking you in the eye and talking about sobriety, consider that God is there, speaking through him or her to you. Or anytime you're sitting in a meeting, consider that God is there. For now, think of God as an acronym for 'Group of Drunks.

I should have written books instead of reading them.

At the beginning of each session, one of us will begin talking about some random idea, another person will chime in or change the subject, and miraculously, after twenty minutes, we find that we have zeroed in on a question that everyone is passionate about. What continues to astonish me is the frequency with which religion slips into the room, unbidden but persistent.

The boundary between the known and the unknown constantly shifts. The other side is the "mysterious." That other side intrigues us, it stimulates us, it provokes us, it haunts us. And it produces new science, and new art.

His dreams have taken hold of his research. His dreams have worn him out, exhausted him so that he sometimes cannot tell whether he is awake or asleep.

T]he truth is I write by ear, always with difficulty and seldom with any exact notion of what is taking place under the hood.

It is not easily summoned. It does not follow the clock. It cannot be rushed. It withers and fades under external schedules and noise and assignments. Rather, it lollygags along on its own; it sprawls in the sun, taking its own time. Divergent thinking is associated with play, creativity, and curiosity.

I would argue, however, that in most and perhaps all forms of creative activity, an unencumbered, unregimented, inward-looking mind is required at certain points—a mind that has unplugged from the wired world.

There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head - and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that's not the most important thing. It's the work itself.

A world grows up around me. Am I shaping it, or do its predetermined contours guide my hand?

Please! Don't all leave. Somebody has to do it, don't you see? Somebody has to save the world...

My dear, beautiful and imaginative things can be destroyed. Beauty and imagination cannot.

It's not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn't be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.

You must understand that knowledge is not all your heritage. I includes also courage and belief, like hers that we commemorate herein...and romance. Always, always romance.

Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction: Simply to participate.

It's only those exceptional and rare individuals who have brilliant ideas delivered to them by the muse, complete and gift wrapped. The rest of us have to work at it.

Give me a platform of ideas and harmonies on which to gesture and unfurl my wings. Give me a place to stand.

Life is a lot more interesting if you are interested in the people and the places around you. So, illuminate your little patch of ground, the people that you know, the things that you want to commemorate. Light them up with your art, with your music, with your writing, with whatever it is that you do.