This is for writers yet to be published who think the uphill climb will never end. Keep believing. This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process. Remember how lucky you are.
Terry BrooksRead
The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can't tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Inspiration is unpredictable and cannot be summoned at will.
This quote emphasizes the unpredictable nature of creativity, likening it to a muse that offers inspiration only when it chooses. It reflects the understanding that artistic inspiration can be fleeting, and one must be ready to embrace it when it arrives, as it may not return on command.
Themes
InspirationCreativityMuseArtUnpredictable
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared during an artist's workshop to encourage participants to embrace spontaneous inspiration.
More from Terry Brooks
All quotes →I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.
Terry BrooksRead
After all, you put a lot into creating a universe and everything that goes with it, and it seems a shame to use it only once.
Terry BrooksRead
If you don't think there is magic in writing, you probably won't write anything magical.
Terry BrooksRead
Fiction writing is a twenty-four-hou r-a-day occupation. You never leave your work behind. It is always with you, and to some extent, you are always thinking about it. You don't take your work home; your work never leaves home. It lives inside you. It resides and grows and comes alive in your mind.
Terry BrooksRead
Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me write about places more distant than Florida, but I can tell you things about Florida and alligators, let you make the connection all on your own.
Terry BrooksRead
Similar quotes
I'm not in any rush. I'm not somebody who, if I write a song, I get it out. That's not something I've ever really quite done.
Bruce SpringsteenRead
This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling, or about politics and idea, is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.
Richard PowersRead
When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.
Raymond CarverRead
'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.
Salman RushdieRead
Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.
Milan KunderaRead
Writing fiction is an inherently political activity because people-even imaginary ones-do not live in vacuums... From Twilight to Romeo and Juliet to The Little Mermaid, no work of the imagination is truly apolitical, because the world and our hopes for it are always part of our stories.
John GreenRead