Quotes About Inspiration

here" was the garden of the Musée Rodin, in Paris,

Cardinal Monkeyflower

Cézanne. Riopelle and Lemieux. Kenojuak Ashevak.

Some cracks let the light in. Some let the darkness out.

testament to a life well lived.

I me memorize a lot of poetry, too, so I'l have something to be saying to myself on long walks. A poem to repeat, either aloud or silently, will help you over a hill or on a long mile as surely as a neighbour who stops his team and gives you a lift.

Louise Shaffer

My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.

The beginning of genius is being scared shitless.

I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time.

I'm a very lucky man. I get to do the thing I want most in life, write songs and sing them for people, and ride bikes. I love my family. I love my home. I get to work with people I've admired my whole life. It's a pretty good life.

I don't know what it is about the shower that generates creative thoughts. Maybe it's the hot water. Maybe it's being unencumbered even by the restriction of clothing.

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

Writin' songs is like a mystery. The most difficult thing to do is have a good idea. If you have a decent idea, the songs are the easy part. Actually having something to say is the hard part. If you get an idea for a song, then it pulls you along.

Beyond hoping that someone will like one of my songs, I don't think about how a song will be received. I just hope that, when somebody hears one of my songs, they'll want to hear it again.

It's really a lot easier to write about things that are problematic. Who wants to hear how happy you are?

I don't know where creativity comes from, but I think everybody has the ability to be creative. I think what's important about creativity starts when you're very young and how we're allowed to experience our imagination. The people who bring us up and teach us are fundamental in either encouraging creativity or discouraging creativity. My imagination was always encouraged.

I'm not the kind of writer that can wake up and say, "Okay, I'm gonna write a song today," and have that song be the kind I would want to record. The songs of mine that I end up liking are songs that come from real experience. They're like chapter titles in my life.

When someone tells me what he or she was doing the first time they heard a song of mine, then I've done a good job. If my song becomes about your life, then I'm successful.

I've been writing seriously since the 90s and my first manuscript was a "hysterical." I was in love with Vikings back then but somehow my Vikings sounded like Navy SEALs on horses. I guess my love for Navy SEALs can be traced back to those Viking sea marauders!

Great emotion always tends to become rhythmic, and out of that tendency the forms of art have been evolved. Art becomes artificial only when the forms take precedence over the emotion.

Without poetry the soul and heart of man starves and dies.

When trying to explain anything, I usually find that the Bible, that great collection of magnificent and varied poetry, has said it before in the best possible way.

Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.