Quotes About Inspiration

Do you ever have ordinary days? she asked as they ascended the stairs. Why would I want them?

I'm praying, he thought to himself.  He'd never been one for church, preferring to take his divine inspiration from what surrounded him.  But lying here with Olivia, touching her reverently, he felt something shift inside him, something large and profound, as though he'd finally learned the answer to a riddle he'd been trying to solve. 

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

Perhaps it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself 'Why?' afterward than before. Anyway, the force of somewhere in space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.

you got tuh go there tuh know there.

It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.

I would like just a little of her sunshine to soak into my soul. I would like that a lot.

Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie. Ah ain't satisfied with mahself no mo'. Ah means tuh make Sam take me fishin' wid him after this.

Jump at the sun. You might not land on the sun, but at least you'll get off the ground.

John will never forsake the weak and the helpless, nor fail to bring hope to the hopeless. That is what they believe, and so they do not worry. They go on and laugh and sing. Things are bound to come out right tomorrow. That is the secret of Negro song and laughter.

he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon.

De first street lamp in uh colored town. Lift yo' eyes and gaze on it. And when Ah touch de match tuh dat lamp-wick let de light penetrate inside of yuh, and let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

That which she chooses to reveal is the life of her imagination, as it sought to mold and interpret her environment.

These two "speech communities," as it were, are Hurston's great sources of inspiration not only in her novels but also in her autobiography.

Put simply, Hurston wrote well when she was comfortable, wrote poorly when she was not.

After all the imagination is a beautiful thing.

Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song.

While I was in the research field in 1929, the idea of Jonah's Gourd Vine came to me. I had written a few short stories, but the idea of attempting a book seemed so big that I gazed at it in the quiet of the night, but hid it away from even myself in daylight.

brother pastorin' up round Ocala dat

She must look on herself as the bell-cow, the other women were the gang.

The will to make life beautiful was strong.

It gave me something to feel about.

Once upon uh time, Ah never 'spected nothin', Tea Cake, but bein' dead from the standin' still and tryin' tuh augh. But you came 'long and made somethin' outa me.

Many people aren't aware of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad who taught some of our most significant conscious, black thinkers of our times. "He