Quotes About Inspiration

I have an older sister named Haley and she wanted to be an actress. So I wanted to be an actress. It's really funny the way that some people don't give kids enough credit for like really being driven, and really wanting to do things so badly.

As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire.

He admires these speculative worlds, that grow up in the crevices between truths.

Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: "I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works." When he suffers, as he does increasingly, from a distressing tightness of the chest and shortness of breath, and when his eyes seem too tired to focus on the printed page, the thought of the letter urges the weak flesh to more Works.

Straight is the line of Duty, Curved is the line of Beauty, Follow the straight line, thou shall see. The curved line ever follow thee.

You have no right to assume that you'll be able to write because you could write yesterday.

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.

He would have explained, if he'd known what sort of explanation Wykys would understand. I gave up fighting because, when I lived in Florence, I looked at frescoes every day? He said, "I found an easier way to be.

Write the book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

You start out, you start talking, you don't even know what you're going to say. You don't even know your way to the end of the sentence. You don't know anything. Then suddenly you do know you have to walk blind and you walk slap into the truth.

The king squeezes his shoulder. There is a new magic in the royal touch. It transmits a vision, a vision of what England could be. You imagine the city of London in the days when prophets walk its streets, when angels cluster on gable ends; you look up as you leave your house, hearing their strong wingbeats in the air.

When it was time to write, and he took his pen in his hand, he never thought of consequences; he thought of style. I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there's nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

I gave up fighting because, when I lived in Florence, I looked at frescoes every day

Writing. Love is writing.

Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of the Earth's greenings. Now, think.

I want to teach. I want to speak. I want to travel.

I feel like I have had the most amazing life in my public service.

NOEL: You can get excited about the future. The past won't mind.

It does wonders for my own psyche to turn envy into inspiration. No matter how successful we become, we're never above that.

Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language, making the creative process something like eavesdropping at a party for which you've had the fun of drawing up the guest list. Loneliness usually doesn't set in until the work is finished, and all the partygoers and their imagined universe have disappeared.

Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language.

I wanted to house myself in SL's thinking. It was so big and well lit, like a large house sitting solid on the bank of a river.

How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together [a meeting of believers] each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. 1 Corinthians 14:26