Quotes About Inspiration

I spent the night on a sliver of rock high up on the east face of Long's Peak, climbing with Tom Frost, and slept at the icy feet of the Dru, listening to the lightning crack above me and the thunder roll down. I only did it to write about it. I would never go up on the Grotto Wall for fun.

I work in a small study on the top floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn - it's about 75 square feet, 11 taken up by book shelves along one wall.

Captain Richard Phillips of the good ship Maersk Alabama - and Sully Sullenberger splashing down his crippled airliner in the Hudson River - broke through the poisonous smog of economic depression and Wall Street skullduggery with a reminder that pure individual heroism is a daily occurrence if we know where to look for it.

It's easier to write about what you know. I wouldn't write about a Wall Street broker, for example.

When I was 15 years old, I read an article about Ivan Boesky, the well-known takeover trader - turned out years later it was all on inside information! But before that came to light, he was very successful, very flamboyant. And I thought, 'This is what I want to do.' So I'm 15 years old, I decide I'm going to Wall Street.

I think a lot of hedge funds get their trades from Wall Street and get their ideas from Wall Street. And I just like to find my own ideas. I'm reading a lot; I read a lot of news. I'm addicted to it. I basically - I follow my nose on news stories.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it's easy to understand the inspiration for its anger as well as its impatience.

Years ago, as I was beginning my professional career on Wall Street, I volunteered as a Big Brother in New York City.

Our African American kids need to know what Black Wall Street was all about.

I grew up with very much an appreciation of the creative side of things, but always knowing how much Wall Street, finance and economics really powered everything else, whether it's politics or the art world.

As much as the Pulitzer is the hallmark of journalism, I think what I love the most is when somebody says they took my column and it's in their wallet. I have had people open their wallet and show me a corner of a column.

Are you motivated? Are you coherent? Is your intention aligned? Are your feet, tongue, heart and wallet congruent? That intention shines through.

'Goodfellas' has kind of got it all. That was probably one of my favorite films as a kid, so I carried a picture of 'Goodfellas' in my wallet.

There can be dramas in your life and you can get over them and become someone. You don't have to wallow in self-pity; you can actually use the experiences in your life to push yourself further and help others.

Picasso took scraps of wallpaper, and instead of using paint and a brush, he used all the existing elements which he made his artwork with.

Brit + Co tries to help women understand that they are creative and give them all sorts of opportunities to try their hand at something creative. We want it to be as easy as possible to start. If that means you uploading a pattern to Spoon flower and make wallpaper, that's great. You made it!

Sell the public flowers... things that they can hang on their walls without being uptight.

The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds.

It must be that a man who shuts himself up between four walls must lose the faculty of associating ideas and words.

First scenes are super-important to me. I'll spend months and months pacing and climbing the walls trying to come up with the first scene. I drive for hours on the freeway.

President Obama called for a 'we' nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that's what we need most in our country today.

I never had posters on my walls, and I didn't have any icons, either. I come from a small village in Wirral, and my family didn't watch TV. I wasn't exposed to people with icon status. David Bowie popped up, but I had already shaved my eyebrows off by the time I saw his.

I need to be performing. I need to be acting. I need to be designing a condo and ripping down walls and buying new plates and looking at fashion magazines. There always has to be some movement in the artistic department for me to not get really, really low.

My father worked in Chrysler's drafting department and used to bring home tracing paper, No. 2 pencils, and masking tape from the office. With these, I used to trace off drawings from the 'Superman' and 'Batman' comics and put them up on my bedroom walls.