Quotes About Inspiration

That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet. (Passed-on by Granddaughter Emily)

Credo che ciò che può cambiare la vita esista sempre al di fuori di noi.

Voor mij is het vermogen van kunst het vermogen om ons wakker te schudden, om ons diep te raken, ons te veranderen. Wat zoeken we als we een roman lezen, een film kijken, naar een muziekstuk luisteren? We zoeken iets wat ons verplaatst, iets waarvan we ons eerder niet bewust waren. We willen onszelf transformeren.

But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer.

That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.

I became a writer in America, but I set my first stories in Calcutta, a city where I have never lived, far from the country where I grew up, and which I knew much better. Why? Because I needed distance between me and the creative space.

When I began writing stories as a child, I wrote copies of what I read, and in many respects, that is what I've have continued doing, in only a slightly less obvious way. The illusion of artistic freedom is just that, an illusion. No words are "my words"—I merely arrange and use them in a certain way.

In the months before coming to Italy, I was looking for another direction for my writing. I wanted a new approach. I didn't know that the language I had studied slowly for many years in America would, finally, give me the direction.

I think that what happens in my poetic work in the future will depend on my being knocked in the face, and thrown flat, and given cancer, and all kinds of other things short of senile dementia.

Behind every great idea is someone saying "It won't work"

An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he'll arrive before death overtakes him.

This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I have a big old brain, but actually I am the sum of the people I work with.

Great works of the imagination are not produced quickly nor do they take quick effect on the popular mind.

Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.

Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how important this work we're doing is.

The majority of my work is from life. I spend most fine days from May to October painting outside.

My optimism for life carried through my work.

My father is a well known artist, Ted Dyer, who has been painting for many years. Our work is very different, but growing up surrounded by paintings, paints, easels and art books does have an effect.

I use about 20 different colours to retain the luminance in my work.

The artist himself is often surprised at the finished work of art. He cannot tell 'how it happened', nor could he repeat the feat at someone's bidding.

Rest assured that if you work every day at your art, using the materials nearest at hand, you will gradually discover such beauty in them that they will fill you with happiness.

We don't need a president who just says, "Gentlemen, start your engines." We need a president who says, America, let's start our economy and put people back to work.

One of the things I like about making stuff in the age of the Internet, is that people make stuff in response to it. You can see people respond to your work visually or musically or with writing.

That's how writing works, at least for me: even the stuff that doesn't work out gets funneled into the stuff that does work out.