Quotes About Inspiration

Why can't it be awesome to work for a food company? Why can't we create an environment where people are trying to push each other to do great things, and we're not trying to steal from anybody - we're trying to be good to our farmers and run an honorable business, if there is such a thing anymore?

I don't deal with writer's block, I don't allow myself to believe that there is such a thing. I think that there are good days and a lot more less good days.

I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention.

I always try to make films in such a way that it's hard to imagine how they came to be, or where they came from.

Getting to meet people that I've admired my entire life, and getting to meet them in such a way where they're coming in to play completely different characters than I had ever seen them do is just wonderful.

You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life; the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.

I believe that it is a whole lifetime of work on Shakespeare's part that enabled him to do what he did. But the question is how you can explain this whole lifetime in such a way to make it accessible and available to us, to me.

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.

I've impacted peoples' lives in such a way that they'll never forget.

You should write songs about what you feel, but you can't write in such a way like it's a diary entry. You should write it in a way that people understand in their lives.

My only job is to write in such a way that the reader gets a new handle on humanity.

I love to play. And fortunately, I don't know a lot of musicians that suck. I know a bunch of really good ones, and they're always up for playing.

There's no secret crazy backstory. I actually suck at writing. It takes me forever to write a song.

I have enormous respect for Steve Johnson, and as I've told him, Feed was one of the inspirations for Salon. They were up there before we were. And also for Joey and the Suck people.

I want to stay hungry. I really believe my resources are best used to help projects that make the world suck less.

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.

Once you lose that fear, good stuff can happen because you're not in your head about whether it will suck. Once you don't care and accept that it probably will suck, then it probably won't suck.

I try to write for women, but I suck at it. I really do.

There is a song called 'I Refuse,' and I get a bit scolding, I suppose, in a way. But it all comes back to elements of hope, and in the case of that song, it's basically, 'Okay, you're trying to suck me into this world of negativity, and I'm not going to go there. I'm going to live my own life.'

It was not even that long ago when my acting career was in the gutter. I was just thinking that I didn't want to live a life still going on auditions and not getting work. I wasn't inspired or anything at the time, and it sucked.

I did a play, back in the day, called 'Sucker Punch,' and it meant so much for me. I was 21. And I went, 'I just want to do work like that.' Stuff I believe in. And when I have compromised, I've never really felt good about it.

'Sucker Punch' is a big girl power movie.