Quotes About Inspiration

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.

I never had to choose my subject- my subject rather chose me.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?

You ought to dream.

We need more true mystery in our lives Hem- he said. The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most. There is of course the problem of sustenance

Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.

But I think the Great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

In a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you.

In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is beacause there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.

Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.

The best sky was in Italy or Spain and in Northern Michigan in the fall

When it's right you can't remember. Every time you read it again it comes as a great and unbelievable surprise. You can't believe you did it. When it's once right you never can do it again. You only do it once for each thing. And you're only allowed so many in your life.

The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.

He wanted to write about country so it would be there like Cezanne had done it in a painting. You have to do it from inside yourself... You could do it if you wanted to fight for it. If you'd lived right with your eyes.

if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it.

It's this way, see--when a writer first starts out, he gets a big kick from the stuff he does, and the reader doesn't get any;then, after a while, the writer gets a little kick and the reader gets a little kick; and finally, if the writer's any good, he doesn't get any kick at all and the reader gets everything.

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.

The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful) the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit's foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit's foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.

Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you. Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

For this, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity. For years it had obseessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself. It was strange how easy being tired enough made it. Now he would never write the things he had saved to write, until he knew enough to write them well

Imagination] is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine. If he gets so he can imagine truly enough people will think that the things he relates all really happened and that he is just reporting.

I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.

Think about after the war and when you will paint again. There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing. You can paint the sea better than anyone now if you will do it and not get mixed up in other things. Hang on good now to how you truly want to do it. You must hold hard to life to do it.