Quotes About Inspiration

Whatever the reasons, reading somehow awakens something in a kid's life that makes them take their own life more seriously and other people's lives more seriously.

She tasted like the blank page of a book before he'd written the first word, the possibilities limitless.

Her hand jerked, leaving an angry slash in the middle of the canvas. A headache drummed to life in the back of her skull. It's not going to happen today. She ignored the shiver that skipped down her spine. This is a normal day. I'm painting a normal composition. But it was too late. It was happening already. She squeezed her eyes shut against the images flooding her brain, but no resistance would help now. She couldn't escape.

Do you need an audience to create work, or does not having an audience liberate you and make you a truer artist?

Science fiction is the agent provocateur of literature.

Ultimately, it will help ensure that more of what you like to read will be written. Thank you.

Child," she said, not taking her gaze from the window, "God ain't waiting at no finish line. No, Jesus is running with you, caring more about the steps on the way than the big finish. Can't nobody impress God. Just look at what he created out there!

Ma used to say stars were heaven's light peeking through pinholes in the velvet sky.

I could see now. I hadn't done anything to deserve a herd like this—friends, family, horses. A God who died for me so I could have a life like this and a God who whispers in my ear.

My nickname for my mom was 'The Compass.'

We all hope for breakthrough rebirth moments.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

Act as if you're a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don't wait for anybody to tell you it's okay.

I believe that we don't choose our stories," she began, leaning forward. "Our stories choose us." She paused and took a sip of water. Her hand, I noticed was steady.. "And if we don't tell them, then we are somehow diminished.

If we are artists- hell, whether or not we're artists- it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn't have existed if not for the fire, the genetic mutation, the sick baby, the accident.

Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.

To forget oneself-to lose oneself in the music, in the moment- that kind of absorption seems to be at the heart of every creative endeavor.

Don't think too much. There'll be time to think later. Analysis won't help. You're chiseling now. You're passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There's something there. It isn't your business yet to know whether it's going to be prize-worthy someday, or whether it will gather dust in a drawer. Now you've carved the tree. You've chiseled the marbled. You've begun.

Issue de la mélancolie, la littérature en est l'accomplissement et l'achèvement. C'est par la mélancolie qu'on entre en littérature. C'est par la littérature qu'on sort de la mélancolie.

Students never think it can be the teacher's fault and so I thought I was stupid. I was frustrated and would come home and cry because I couldn't do it. Then we got a new teacher who made math accessible. That made all the difference and I learned that it's how you present it that makes it scary or friendly.

It's such a diversion to be constantly thinking of better ways I can teach people math that my hunger is for that really, for new ways of translating the beauty of it.

I recognize that I have a unique position to be a role model to young girls because I am doing something that they consider glamorous, which is acting, and yet I took a time to really get my education and study mathematics, and I think math is the cat's meow.

On Memorial Day, I was out floating on Lake Norman and came across Denny Hamlin. We struck up a conversation, and one of the first things we were talking about was how much it helped him when he started racing the Cup car and how much it helped his Nationwide program.

It's hard to feel down when you're out in the natural world, and there's a reason for that. Scientists would call it quantum physics,