Quotes About Inspiration

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.

When I am near the end of a book, I have to sleep in the same room with it.

Details are our business as writers. Your heart leaps when you see a detail that can go somewhere

Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.

Ten watercolors were made from that star.

I bought new strings of colored lights. This served as a profession of faith in the future. I take the opportunity for such professions where and when I can invent them, since I do not yet actually feel this faith in the future.

Because we were both writers and both worked at home our days were filled with the sound of each other's voice

Had he not warned me when I forgot my own notebook that the ability to make a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being able to write?

Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.

the most beautiful things I had ever seen had all been seen from airplanes.

Well, this whole question of how you work out the narrative is very mysterious. It's a good deal more arbitrary than most people who don't do it would ever believe.

The impulse to write things down is a particularly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.

This served as a profession of faith in the future. I take the opportunity for such professions where and when I can invent them, since I do not yet actually feel this faith in the future.

Who is the director of dreams, would he care? Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

Or was it even a dream? Who is the director of dreams, would he care? Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought.

What kind of magpie keeps this notebook?

I'm only myself in front of my typewriter.

I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed.

supported the high ceilings.

You have come nearer to mastering a good many aspects of cooking than anyone except a handful of great chefs, and some day it will pay off. I know it will. You will just have to go on working, and teaching, and getting around, and spreading the gospel until it does. (Avis DeVoto to Julia Child)

King Arthur is treated like George Washington often is—as a hero who is so noble and so far above the common man that he seems more like a stuffed owl than a real person.

We say that so-and-so is a loving person or a cold person; we admire, are even awed by, people who have a large capacity for compassion. I think of Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.

There's this saying, 'May their memory be a blessing,' and she says that's what she hopes to be. A