Quotes About Inspiration

Dorothy looked at me and looked at me and she really said she thought my brains were a miracle. I mean she said my brains reminded her of a radio because you listen to it for days and days and you get discouradged and just when you are getting ready to smash it, something comes out that is a masterpiece.

Paris is devine

And when a girl walks around and reads all of the signs with all of the famous historical names it really makes you hold your breath. Because when Dorothy and I went on a walk, we only walked a few blocks but in only a few blocks we read all of the famous historical names, like Coty and Cartier and I knew we were seeing something educational at last and our whole trip was not a failure.

Get informed. Get outraged. Get inspired. Get active.

Jerry J. Mallett: From it I learned that it is never too late to have your life changed by a children's book.

Wendell Minor: I believe that children's books are the last pond in the Serengeti. They are the only place we go to drink for inspiration. All of us can still go - and do....

Books hold our culture, our past, other worlds, the antidote for sadness.

No one should have the power to make you feel small. Remember, you are the one with the power to create your happiness.

one or both of those babies could be president one day. Or they could discover the cure for a terrible disease, or one could be a famous musician or even a preacher.' I stopped and considered for a minute, wondering what would impress her more than that. 'Or just be fine and decent men or women, or man and woman, who would be a blessing to you in your old age. There's a purpose for every soul that comes into this world...

I wanted to be a teacher, but I was a lousy student, one of the slowest readers. It was a tremendous struggle. But I'm lucky I had some teachers who saw something in me.

I don't work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream--now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock. In the context of a story, a fairly boring thought in a character's head can work better than a brilliant one, and a brilliantly laid-out structure can be so much worse for a story than one that is more haphazard.

I'm always amazed by my friends who were reading Samuel Beckett back when I was reading Wonder Woman. I didn't think about books much in those days. I took a creative-writing course in high school, but only because it allowed me to skip gym.

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.

A conviction, unformulated but strong, rose to the working level of her mind - that painting did something more important for Nicholas than the mere gratifying of a whim; that this form of work and liberty of expression straightened out in him something that was tangled, set free in him something that, shut up, turned bad and poisoned him from below.

and I shambled after as usual as I've been doing all my life after people that interest me, because the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yearn or say a commonplace thing ... but burn, burn, burn like Roman candles across the night.

Writers were like parasites, preying on other people's stress and misery. Objective observers like spies or detectives.

I think eventually I want to become a teacher, like my father wanted to be, and hopefully positively influence the next generation.

My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together.

Sitting on the back of my motorbike going from west to east through Mongolia was one of the most inspiring and awesome experiences I've ever had. There was so little influence of the western world.

I haven't written a score that's going to change the Western world or the musical as we presently know it.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

It was quite frightening to be asked to write the music of a Western because there are so many things that you can refer to that can be cliche, and that could really poison your mind, from Morricone, to Bernstein, to Neil Young. So much music has been written for Westerns, that you wonder how you're going to find a new or different idea.

I was growing up with a single mom who'd be at work when I came home from school. So I'd just turn on the TV. I grew up watching old Clint Eastwood westerns. I adopted him as one of my male role models.

My parents weren't involved in show business, but my parents would show me. We'd watch old films in the house. Little film festivals of Westerns and stuff like that when I was a kid. I knew I wanted to be those guys in those movies before I knew what being an actor was.