Quotes About Inspiration

I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.

There's no one actor in particular that I want to model my career after, except for the people who have been able to keep their career varied and who choose things that interest them. That opportunity is all I really want.

George Balanchine is my role model because his work is so varied. You can see two ballets of his and not even realize that they are by the same choreographer.

'Get Skinny' is my sixth book. I look over the books that I've written, and my subject matters are varied, and I write books pertaining to that which I'm dealing with at the moment.

'Take Me Apart' doesn't feel cohesive in a singular way but in a varied way. You can fixate on individual songs, and there are references from all over the place: Anita Baker to Bjork. I wanted to show all the facets of myself.

However varied you try to make your work, you still bump up against the end of you. You keep knocking into a wall, and the wall is your own skull. But when you adapt somebody's work, it's like a door into somewhere else. It feels like a holiday from myself.

The recording sessions for 'Noonday Dream' were so varied and over quite a period of time.

When I'm writing, I write all day. Other days, I sit around thinking. Or I run around from one meeting to another, out in the world. It varies, and I like that.

Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.

Time spent researching varies from book to book. Some novels require months, even years of research, others very little. I try to do most of my research before I begin but inevitably questions emerge during the writing.

It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.

My day-to-day varies. I do some public speaking. I talk to school groups.

The music that I listen to on set really varies. When I need lots of energy and I'm dying down towards the day, I need to play hip hop or rap or else my energy just crashes after a long day. When I'm shooting something moody or where I have to play it down a bit, I'll play Lana Del Rey or something more mellow.

It varies from song to song, but melody was always easy for me.

I listen to a lot of Tupac and Biggie Smalls. Old school songs. Rick Ross. I listen to a guy ASAP Rocky. I like different kinds of music. I always have. It motivates me before games... A Tupac playlist or a Meek Mill playlist. It varies.

The minimum I need is six months to allow for dithering, procrastination and the research. The research times varies from book to book; some are faster because they're based off resources I have at my disposal.

I've been working a lot with Benny Blanco; he's a producer. And I've been working with Diplo and a bunch of other people. Detail, Charlie Handsome. A variety of people.

In case you're unfamiliar with TED, it is a series of short lectures on a variety of subjects that stream on the Internet for free.

I'm about 75 pages into a book on poetry. I don't know if anybody wants to read it. It's on any broad variety of subjects. I walk down the street and think of a topic and jot it down and say, 'Okay, that's another one.' They go from the humorous to the serious to every topic imaginable.

The best way we can encourage people to create companies that create jobs is to celebrate the diverse entrepreneurial stories and the variety of drivers that led these entrepreneurs to sticking their necks out.

I listen to a variety of music. The only common point is strong lyrics; I'm more obsessed with lyrics than music. I need to hear a form of truth, and if it's a hard truth, even better.

I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel.

I love Octavia Spencer. I love what she has to say as a human, and I love her career and the variety of characters she has played.

When kids like Steven Spielberg were eight and nine and 10, they had little cameras, and that's all they wanted to do. When I was 10, I was in my attic pretending to host my own variety show. Spielberg wasn't. That's why he's a film director, and I'm doing what I'm doing.