Quotes About Inspiration

It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

She paused for a moment. "Teaching is a calling, too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy—angels leading their flocks out of the darkness.

Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls

Mom painted dozens of variations and studies of the Joshua tree. We'd go with her and she'd give us art lessons. One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. You'd be destroying what makes it special, she said. It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.

For the artist, the color, the bouquet, the tinkling of the spoon on the saucer, are things in the highest degree. He stops at the quality of the sound or the form. He returns to it constantly and is enchanted with it.

Je pense, lui dis-je, que nous voilà, tous tant que nous sommes, à manger et à boire pour conserver notre précieuse existence et qu'il n'y a rien, rien, aucune raison d'exister… L'autodidacte répondit que la vie a un sens si on veut bien lui en donner un. Il faut d'abord agir, se jeter dans une entreprise. Il y a un but, Monsieur, il y a un but… il y a les hommes.

Genius is not a gift, but the way a person invents in desperate circumstances.

Lo sé. Sé que nunca más encontraré nada ni nadie que me inspire pasión. Tú sabes que ponerse a querer a alguien es una hazaña. Se necesita una energía, una generosidad, una ceguera... Hasta hay un momento, al principio mismo, en que es preciso saltar un precipicio; si uno reflexiona, no lo hace. Sé que nunca más saltaré.

Roquentin wonders if he could do the same as the man who wrote the tune. Not in music, but in the realm of art. Not a history book, because that is about what has existed, and existence is pointless, is not necessary.

A work of art is only a page torn from a life. It expresses this life, of course, but it could have very well not expressed it. No matter, for everything has the same value, whether it be writing The Possessed or drinking a cup of coffee.

Thirdly, the existent individual is impassioned, impassioned with a passionate thought; he is inspired; he is a kind of incarnation of the infinite in the finite. This passion which animates the existent (and this brings us to the fourth characteristic) is what Kierkegaard calls "the passion of freedom.

Although I wanted my players to work to win, I tried to convince them they had always won when they had done their best.

I was moved no end by the work of LaVern Baker.

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

In the critics' vocabulary, the work 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemics or rivalry.

Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him.

Yes, God is the end of your work, but He is the beginning also.

With all its variety and liveliness, color acts in the work of art as blood does as it circulates through our bodies. Color is what keeps the painting alive and moving.

I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.

Representational painters: place your works in a larger context. Give your work not only breadth but breath. Do not 'copy' what you see outwardly but give it 'spirit.