Quotes About Inspiration

I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they're actually trying to find out, "Is he as crazy as I am?" I don't need that question answered.

but if the Spirit "bloweth" where He "listeth," those, too, who have become believers here are made partakers of that gift; and that according to the proportion of their faith, not in consequence of their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

John was not a logician, but a seer; not a reasoner, but a mystic; he does not argue, but assert; he arrives at conclusions with one bound, as by direct intuition.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet.

Thus, with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: Fool! said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write.

Who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught?

One thing I knew about the novelist's task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.

That was the dream of Montparnasse: to live for the moments of the greatest intensity, to find in them a truthful inspiration, and to hell with all the rest.

The guitar has shown us again and again: Three chords can rock the world.

If you pick up a guitar and it says, "Take me, I'm yours," then that's the one for you. —Frank Zappa

The idea came to me complete from start to finish – a most unusual occurrence, as any writer will tell you, for ordinarily a story has to be struggled with, changed around and mixed up.

Jimmy Stewart wrote to my father on December 31, 1946, "More important than anything, thank you for giving us that idea, which I think is the best one that anyone has had for a long time. It was an inspiration for everyone concerned with the picture to work in it, because everyone seemed to feel that the fundamental story was so sound and right, and that story was yours, and you should be justly proud of it.

By this time, I had become fond of the story that nobody wanted. I revised it again and had 200 twenty-four-page pamphlets printed at my own expense. I sent these out as Christmas cards for Christmas, 1943.

music gives me a structure to think about how the world could possibly be.

One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.

One cannot underestimate boredom as an incentive to write.

Tell my daughter Elizabeth -- no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.

Même si ça parâit impossible, on a bien le droit de rêver, non?

Ik ben vijftien. Ik heb al honderden boeken gelezen. Ik voel me zwaar van al die boeken, een heerlijke zwaarte. Ik zal mijn leven lang blijven lezen. Ik zal er mijn beroep van maken. Ik word leraar. Een leraar van een bijzondere soort die nooit lesgeeft, die geen leerlingen heeft, maar boeken schrijft over wat hij gelezen heeft, met als doel anderen het verlangen en de behoefte te geven om hem na te volgen.

Parfois les rêves se réalisent, surtout dans les histoires et surtout dans la vie.

Les limites existent seulement dans l'esprit de ceux qui ne savent pas rêver." (The limits exist only in the minds of those who can not dream)

There is no such thing as motivation in my world. I am not motivated to do what I do. As an artist, I am driven, I am compelled, I am thrust forward by a force so rooted inside me, so convincing, that it seems futile to try to explain it. Although it has a name: passion.