Quotes About Inspiration

Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate!

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Try to see yourself with power. Not power so that you can get even with anybody else. Power so that you can become even with your vision- Maya Angelo

People view celebrities from a place of envy and inferiority. Instead of being personally inspired by their great artistry they see them in a position they could never attain

It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.

I get all fired up about aging in America.

But Henry was not prepared to submit. In a speech supporting his resolutions, he supposedly exclaimed, "Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third..." Before he could finish the phrase, red-robed Speaker of the House John Robinson cried, "Treason! Treason," as other burgesses took up the cry. But Henry stared the Speaker in the eye and finished his sentence: "...may profit by their example! If this be treason, make the most of it!

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

In art one idea is as good as another.

The past does not influence me; I influence it.

Ik schrijf, hoewel ik weet dat men alleen één woord schrijven kan door er tienduizend over te slaan. Maar deze tienduizend blijven zweven als modder in een glas vuil water. Kijkt men er boven in, dan verduisteren zij het neerslag dat op die bodem ligt. Ik zie wat ik geschreven heb alleen maar door de troebele mist van dat wat geen gestalte heeft aangenomen. Begrijpt men nu, waarom het door mijzelf beschreven papier zulk een verontreinigde indruk op mij maakt?

Literatuur is de neerslag of het verslag van een geestelijk avontuur in een taal die eigen, levend en origineel is.

The special calling of the artist is to call the world to a kind of rest or remind it of its restlessness

I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don't find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges.

Dip your pen into your arteries and write.

Every great movement needs an agitator. Every leader of spiritual ideals need a John the Baptist.

First of all we must remember that Theodore Roosevelt was young, a President in his early forties. His appeal was directly to young Republicans. He awakened hope in the colleges. It was not strange that Calvin Coolidge heard him.

Politicians become statesmen, not by honoring pious shibboleths, nor even by moving [people] to action with inspiring rhetoric, but by recognizing and then resolving the central dilemmas of their age.

How many a world-embracing creed has sprung from a tiny contradiction in terms!

The drama is not dead but liveth, and contains the germs of better things.

Optimists enrich the present, enhance the future, challenge the improbable and attain the impossible