Quotes About Inspiration

The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.

Up up and quit your books' is not an adjuration commonly thought advisable in universities but there are occasions -- as for instance, when studying Wordsworth when it might be advisable.

The passion that transforms life, and art, did not seem to be mine. But in all essentials, my life was a good performance.

Music is what I always turn to when I'm feeling a certain way. It's my reason for everything.

Art matters because it is the one true great connector in a world that seems to be very unconnected.

The most marvelous and astonishing thing in nineteen centuries of history is the power of His life over the members of the Christian Church. 50/104 George Bancroft said: I find the name of Jesus Christ written on the top of every page of modern history.

would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus.5

parents are heroes already—all they have to do is start acting like it.

How am I, a writer, supposed to feel about having lost you to a reader?

Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln's Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer's rule applies: Have the courage to write badly.

us both that his attempt

You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all.

When Roseanne read the first script of mine that got into her hands without being edited by someone else she said, 'How can you write a middle-aged woman this well?' I said, 'If you met my mom you wouldn't ask'.

Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh and cruel. But that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.

Writing is the greatest thing that can happen to a human being. It's the best.

Anything can be good. Even Last Action Hero could've been good. There's an idea somewhere in almost any movie : if you can find something that you love, then you can do it. If you can't, it doesn't matter how skilful you are...

Why do you write strong female characters? Because you're still asking me that question.

I myself have never enjoyed anything more than writing. I love to live in that world.

I just thought, 'Wait a minute, if I'm going to start writing again, I have to go to the quiet place.' And this is the least quiet place I've ever been in my life. … It's like taking the bar exam at Coachella. It's like, 'Um, I really need to concentrate on this! Guys! Can you all just…I have to…It's super important for my law!

In a way, we [poets] are listeners. I go to poetry because I don't have the words." —

My heart is taken by you and these mornings since I am a horse running towards a cracked sky where there are countless dawns breaking simultaneously. There are two moons on the horizon and for you I have broken loose.

It was impossible to make it through the tragedy Without poetry. What are we without winds becoming words?

Every collection of poetry makes a force field of energy. When creating you give yourself over to it. In the fiercest moments of imagination the artist may not know where they are going, the how and when of it, and it doesn't matter. What matters is the process regenerates and meaning shifts at every turn.

So a lot of these images are kept for – they serve a certain purpose. They can open up a moment, like that crow. It gives a place of peace. That's how we humans find meaning. We find it in metaphor. It inspires us and keeps us going.