Quotes About Inspiration

My Alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.

When you leave the theater wanting to discuss the play, that's a good play. When you leave the theater wanting to discuss your life and the world, that's art

A simple creature unlettyrde. Julian of Norwich called herself. The most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. Echoed Jane Austen—four hundred years afterward.

People who write novels only write them when they have very little else to write

Demasiadas notas, mi querido Mozart.

Jackson Pollock alguna vez fue asistente de David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Matisse, consultado sobre la piel verde: No estoy pintando una mujer. Estoy pintando un cuadro.

Ese material se te ocurre cuando estás borracho? Preguntó un primo de Faulkner.

Por qué el Escritor a veces parece admirar el Ulises aún más cuando piensa en él que cuando efectivamente lo lee?

Uno no termina un poema, simplemente lo abandona.

Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best.

don't expect a magic formula that'll make books fall out of your head and automatically give you a wide readership.

Hope is a verb with its shirtsleeves rolled up.

There is a story that some years ago an interested mother wrote to a principal of a school, 'Don't teach my boy poetry, he's going to run for Congress.' I've never taken the view that the world of politics and the world of poetry are so far apart." They are united, Kennedy suggests, because their greatness depends on "courage"—it is what makes, as Frost might put it, "all the difference.

JFK had a way of grabbing grandeur from mishap.

In front of an audience of Protestant clergy, the Catholic JFK was drawing strength from his vulnerability.

Artists are artists whether they produce or not. None of it requires much more than hanging out.

To be honest with everyone around you, humble no matter how good things get, reliable and consistent so that everyone knows what to expect, to willingly share your experiences with others—including those who might one day take your job!—to manage change with a smile on your face and stay engaged with everyone so that you can know how best to inspire them. That is what it takes to be a great teammate.

Wanting creates the space in which our highest aspirations come into being.

Have a blessed day." This can make you feel like you've been sprayed against your will with God cologne.

clatter of a typewriter suggests that you're actually building something.

That's the thing with a diary, though. In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it. Not at your desk, but beyond it. Out in the world where it's so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.

but all of a sudden they're poets, right, like that's all it takes — being in love.

The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers.