Quotes About Inspiration

With music I feel like it's the one time when I don't have to think and I don't have to contrive anything.

Lady Gaga listens to me. Her mantra is only one word - 'Bikram' - because Bikram makes her what she is today. It works.

Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word.

High-concept one-liners were huge when I got my start in the film industry.

I definitely still like writing one-liners, but I also think that I've changed a lot in that I've allowed myself freedom to grow.

One of the stories that inspires me is that it is documented that a honey badger killed a lion in a one-on-one.

Every Olympics, when I was growing up and playing basketball, my parents and I made it a point to sit down and watch the U.S.A. compete. To join that team later, and play and practice one-on-one with David Robinson, Larry Bird, Chris Mullens and all these guys I looked up to, was a dream come true.

I wouldn't be one-third of the player I am today if it wasn't for Avenged. They're an inspiring group of guys, and I'm constantly challenged to write things beyond my ability and then figure out how to play them.

Since I was young, the artistic expression that fashion embodies has inspired me. It's a way to communicate oneself.

Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

In writing, one searches, and that is what keeps one writing, that one sees and experiences things from another angle entirely; one experiences oneself during the process of writing.

I think writing is an extension of a childhood habit - the habit of entertaining oneself by taking interesting bits of reality and building upon them.

The girl that introduced The Smiths' song 'Asleep' to me was an important musical influence that I met in college. From there it's been an ongoing journey of different bands at different times, introducing bands and songs to me.

I have many intense friendships with artists. I don't mean we have intense one-day conversations but ongoing conversations that last in some cases for years.

I've had an ongoing fantasy about being interviewed on, like, a '60 Minutes'-type show about this really inspiring woman that can do anything with a fake leg. And then the camera pans out, and I'm just holding a mannequin leg.

My grandfather bought me my first Marvel comic book when I was six years old, and since then, it has been an ongoing love. It was an 'X-Men' comic book.

I like keeping an ongoing list of dream collaborators on my phone. I like to write down all of my dreams, actually.

Sometimes I'll get ideas in the middle of the night. Sometimes at 3 in the morning I'll get up, and I have a notebook by my bed and have to write it down. I'll dream an idea. Sometimes I see an image online, and I think, 'OK, let's make that a three-layer cake!'

I took up a few sessions online to learn to play flute.

I have my own voice and can focus only on that. I know what I like; I find my inspirations in so many other places than just online and bring that into my work.

Mara Casey gave me my first job. I saw something online, and it was for a part in a 'Gilmore Girls' episode, and I thought I was right for it.

The story and the characters of 'Girl Online' are mine.

Being an only child, you just have a lot of time on your hands, figuring things out. Just doing music, man - music just came to me.