Quotes About Inspiration

We are fictioneers.

He had taught me how to be a man when my real father proved not to be much of one himself and incapable of showing a son the way.

My life would be constrained by the horror and fierce rage that my appearance inspired, but I would know peace as well as fear, tenderness as well as brutality, and even love in a time of cruelty.

My imagination is as rich as my bank account is empty.

Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think you can bear to give it, he instructed before I began to write, because you won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope.

I'd always had an ear for beauty, and maybe I'd had an eye for it as well, but until that day, I'd not recognized that the truth in great music could be found also in great art, that the heart could be lifted and the mind sharpened equally by both.

Her imagination was such that she could hear the song of the bird when it was still but a yolk in an egg.

Humor is a petal on the flower of hope, and hope blossoms on the vine of faith. They have faith in each other and faith that life has meaning, and from this faith comes their indefatigable good humor, which is their greatest gift to each other—and to me.

She has suffered so much, and that sorrows me. But she has been strong in the face of unthinkable adversity, and that inspires me.

When we are transported either by Mozart or Glenn Miller, we find ourselves in the presence of the ineffable, for which all words are so inadequate that to attempt to describe it, even with effusive praise and words of perfect beauty, is to engage in blasphemy.

Was the dividing line between life and fiction as hazy for other people as it was for a writer?

Art is the only answer to chaos and the void.

although we universally celebrate imagination, it is in fact a power that can uplift us and save us --- or as easily demean and destroy us. Mozart imagined great music. Hitler imagined death camps and built them.

Grandpa Teddy often said, "In the beginning was the word. Before all else, the word. So we speak as if words matter, because they do.

it is essentially not about sensation but about passion, and passion is not of the flesh but of the mind and heart.

There are other worlds to sing in.

And because we have been given thought, will, and imagination, albeit on a human scale, we too have this power to create.

She was my sister, beloved, who had stayed in my room around the clock when I'd been eight and suffered with a case of the flu that nearly killed me. She was my sister, whose clarinet playing inspired me to find the music in me, to settle on the saxophone, which had fast become the key to my identity. I loved her as I loved no one else, as no others had allowed me to love them, and if I were to kill her under the influence of some malign spirit, I might as well then kill myself.

Stories were the greatest blessing of intelligence. They were food for the soul. They were medicine.

Is this not pathetic, Odd, what some ill-educated fool has done? I take solace in reminding myself that 'art is long and critics are the insects of a day.'" "Shakespeare?" I asked. "No. Randall Jarrell. A wonderful poet, now all but forgotten because modern universities teach nothing but self-esteem and toe-sucking.

She wondered what it was about storytelling that made people want it almost as much as food and water, even more so in bad times than good. Movies had never drawn more patrons than during the Great Depression. Book sales often improved in a recession. The need went beyond a mere desire for entertainment and distraction from one's troubles. It was more profound and mysterious than that.

Music-good music, great music-is itself magical, it's mysterious inspiration entwined with the mystery of all things. When we are transported either by Mozart or Glenn Miller, we find ourselves in the presence of the ineffable, for which all words are so in adequate that to attempt to describe it, even with effusive praise and words of perfect beauty, is to engage in blasphemy.

The life of a seamstress is no smaller than the life of a queen, the life of a child with Down syndrome no less filled with promise than the life of a philosopher, because the only significant measure of your life is the positive effect you have on others, either by conscious acts of will or by unconscious example.

There's such a thing as trying too hard, he told himself. It causes constipation of the mind. But such admonishments did no good. He was still as blocked as a pipe full of concrete.