Quotes About Inspiration

Surprise is a major factor in distinguishing an answer to prayer from a projection of my own mental processes. When I can't believe I made up the answer myself, I have to look around to see where it came from.

It occurred to me that when I begin to write, I open myself and wait. And when I turn toward an inner spiritual awareness, I open myself and wait.

But if you worry about other people as you write a first draft, you will not be able to free your unconscious mind to give up its treasures. It will be bound by the great dogs of your fear,

Follow, poet, follow right to the bottom of the night. I have no choice but to pursue the deepest truth my life has given me.

I have come to understand, through my own writing and through working with other writers, that fear is a friend of the writer. Where there is fear, there is buried treasure. Something important lies hidden—something that matters—like the angel waiting in the stone that Michelangelo began to carve.

Writing is often a struggle between the personal and the universal, and the way writers deal with that struggle varies.

December 13, 2011, Piscataway, New Jersey, on the road with the Lady Vols, seven months after diagnosis

Every Moment is a Teaching Moment

What Michelle didn't yet know was that there is a vast difference between playing and leading. The point guard position in basketball is one of the great tutorials on leadership, and it ought to be taught in classrooms. Anyone can perfect a dribble with muscle memory;

Yes. It is. —June 23, 2012, at night driving from Henrietta back to Knoxville with the tape recorder off, thirteen months after diagnosis

Don't let reading make you arrogant. It can happen-believe me. Maybe you've even met a person or two like this, someone who thinks that being an English literature major or particularly well read puts them above the crowd. Take my advice:even if it's true, don't go there. ... I urge you to read, knowing the words you absorb will come out in your life in ways that inspire, uplift and encourage someone else. Life is meant to be passed on. Read with a servant's heart.

One night, Walt and I looked out over the audience and saw hundreds of Olympic athletes from around the world, people of every race, language and nation. Walt's eyes shone as he said, "Isn't that amazing? Here are all of these people, different in so many ways, yet united by their hopes and goals and dreams. This is how the world should be.

Art is a means to enter, to play with, to dance with, to wrestle with anything that intrigues, delights, disturbs, or terrifies us.

Spread joy. Chase your wildest dreams.

His intelligence seized on a subject, his genius embraced it, his eloquence illuminated it.

Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.

That's the beginning of magic. Let your imagination run and follow it.

It's only fabric! Freestyle fabric cutting and sewing is a low-risk endeavor with a strong payoff of personal growth and empower- ment.

I've embarked on personal adventures with each of these quilts. I want to teach you how to do the same.

Take a good look at your fabric and intuit what it is saying to you.

If I've already figured out how the book ends, why bother to finish writing it? My writing isn't terribly efficient, because I often have to backtrack a bit when I change my mind, but I like the sense of discovery that comes from not knowing what happens next.

The cool thing about writing is that there is really never a typical day. Sometimes I get a rhythm going and head off to work every morning and come home at night. Sometimes I'll write for two days straight and then be utterly blank for the next two.

To make great art, you had to expose your soul, and some things should be left safely in the dark.

This world has need of song and sword.