Quotes on Inspiration

Always be looking for that which you do well and that which you love doing, and when you find those two things together — man, you got it.

Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.

Inspiration comes of working every day.

We're taught to be ashamed of confusion, anger, fear and sadness, and to me they're of equal value to happiness, excitement and inspiration.

Always was Morocco. And recently the country's leadership seems to have embraced it in all its ill-reputed glory. The days of predatory poets in search of literary inspiration and young flesh are probably over for good. Hippies can just as easily get their bong riffs in Portland or Peoria. But the good stuff, the real good stuff, the sounds and smells and the look of Tangier -- what you see and hear when you lean out the window and take it all in -- that's here to stay.

Self-observation is the first step of inner unfolding.

I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.

One, don't wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it's going?

I eat like a vulture. Unfortunately the resemblance doesn't end there.

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

Being disabled should not mean being disqualified from having access to every aspect of life.

Change is fundamental in story. If things go static, stories die.

I'll never stop eating animals, I'm sure, but I do think that for the benefit of everyone, the time has come to stop raising them industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly

It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Someone might have a germ of talent, but 90 percent of it is discipline and how you practice it, what you do with it. ... Instinct won't carry you through the entire journey. It's what you do in the moments between inspiration.

For me it's all about personal vision; is there something about a subject that uniquely speaks to me.

Portray [people with mental illness] sympathetically, and portray them in all the richness and depth of their experience as people, and not as diagnoses.