Quotes About Inspiration

Importantly, it was in this out north to Steering, with the real Ellen James sleep and in his care, that T. S. Garp decided he would try to be more like his mother, Jenny Fields. A thought, it occurred to him, that would have pleased his mother greatly if it had only come to him when she was alive.

wherever Melony went, she would not be without guidance, she would not be without love, without faith; she had a good book with her. If only she'll keep reading it, and reading it

I have digressed, which is also the kind of writer I would become.

It was in looking at sea gulls that it first occurred to Homer Wells that he was free.

What a power I had discovered! I felt certain I could refill those bleacher seats—one day, I was sure, I could "see" everyone who'd been there; I could find that special someone my mother had waved to, at the end.

Le romancier est comme un médecin qui ne s'occuperait que des incurables. Et nous sommes tous des incurables.

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT—IT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT—IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.

Reading good novels can make almost anything seem imaginable

Escribió que la peor razón para que algo ocurriera en una novela era que hubiera ocurrido realmente. "¡Todo ha ocurrido realmente, alguna vez!", rabiaba. "La única razón para que algo ocurra es que es perfecto que ocurra en ese momento". -Dime cualquier cosa que te haya ocurrido a ti- dijo en cierta ocasión a una entrevistadora- y yo lo mejoraré. Puedo mostrar los detalles mejor que como ocurrieron.

There's a reason we're fiction writers, you know—real life sucks; make-believe is our business," I try to tell her.

If you are luck enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

But miracles don't c-c-c-cause belief—real miracles don't m-m-m-make faith out of thin air; you have to already have faith in order to believe in real miracles.

Imagining something is better than remembering something

Imagining the stories you want to write, and waiting to write them, is part of the writing process—like thinking about the characters you want to create, but not creating them.

Then he looked only at me. "YOU'RE GETTING SMALLER, BUT I CAN STILL SEE YOU!" said Owen Meany. Then

They were William Blake's words, set to song

Women readers kept fiction alive—here was another one.

No, it's never easier. The new book doesn't know the first four were ever written.

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness," Rilke had written.

That was when Angel Wells became a fiction writer, whether he knew it or not. That's when he learned how to make the make-believe matter to him more than real life mattered to him; that's when he learned how to paint a picture that was not real and never would be real, but in order to be believed at all—even on a sunny Indian summer day—it had to be better made and seem more real than real; it had to sound at least possible.

Reality, for orphans, is so often outdistanced by their ideals

It's not like writing a novel. It's easy to know the future when I'm making up the story.

As in many things, my mother could be extremely accomplished without being in the least original or even inventive.