Quotes About Inspiration

You had to write it, and he had to play it, and I'm just so grateful I got to see it.

If you want to make art, go get a job at the Loov-rah.

How much money do we pay for an education that will allow us to loop our necktie the same way each morning, to be given a regular parking spot to park our BMW every day, to buy a summer home so that even our vacations become routine? We are drilled in this unending sameness in high school, and only the insane and the inspired ever get past it.

Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination

Unless we are very young or lifelong fools, we do not look to artists --- or their biographers --- for our role models. Their work is enough.

You need songs that make you feel. Some make you string, some make you weak. Some build determination, some tear you apart. But you need all of those...Run through the pain.

That's the thing about music. You get to make it mean whatever you need it to mean.

Some people believe in God; I believe in Chris.

Live the life you've dreamed.

You need songs that make you feel. Some make you strong, some make you weak. Some build determination, some tear you apart. But you need all of those.

Martin was swept up in the sound—no longer blood and bone, frozen feet and hungry belly, but an empty vessel filling with notes, carried by something older and bigger and more permanent than himself.

I don't do my work for any kind of group in particular, except for hobos, who just plain kick ass and light up my life.

Books are the best means—private, discreet, reliable—of overcoming reality.

I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike us to our depths, change us. What are we searching for when we read a novel, see a film, listen to a piece of music? We are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us, that we weren't aware of before. We want to transform ourselves, just as Ovid's masterwork transformed me.

My grandfather always says that's what books are for. To travel without moving an inch.

If the process of writing is a dream, the book cover represents the awakening.

That's what books are for, to travel without moving an inch.

I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike our depths, change us. What are we searching for when we read a novel, see a film, listen to a piece of music? We are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us, that we we weren't aware of before. We want to transform ourselves, just as Ovid's masterwork transformed me.

And yet my lexicon develops without logic, in a darting, fleeting manner. The words appear, accompany me for a while, then, often without warning, abandon me.

In the face of everything that seems to me unattainable, I marvel. Without a sense of marvel at things, without wonder, one can't create anything.

Translation will open up entire realms of possibilities, unforeseen pathways that will newly guide and inspire the writer's work, and possibly even transform it. For to translate is to look into a mirror and see someone other than oneself.

Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer.

I start with very short pieces, usually no more than a handwritten page. I try to focus on something specific: a person, a moment, a place. I do what I ask my student to do when I teach creative writing. I explain to them that such fragments are the first steps to take before constructing a story. I think a writer should observe the real world before imagining a nonexistent one.

Without a sense of marvel at things, without wonder, one can't create anything. If everything were possible, what would be the meaning, the point of life?