The seed of your next art work lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece. Such imperfections (or mistakes, if you’re feeling particularly depressed about them today) are your guides -- valuable, reliable, objective, non-judgmental guides -- to matters you need to reconsider or develop further.”
—David Bayles and
Ted Orland
Excellent ideas come to me every moment and if instead of executing them at the very moment they are clothed with the charm imagination lends them . . . one forgets, or what is worse, one no longer finds any interest in what seemed inspiring.
—Delacroix
I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
—Federico Fellini
We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
—Frank Tibolt
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
—Igor Stravinsky
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
—Jack London
Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance
—James Joyce
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day."
—James Joyce
Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.
—John Updike
Some people find it easier to picture the stream of inspiration as being like radio waves of all sorts being broadcast at all times. With practice, we learn to hear the desired frequency on request. We tune in to the frequency we want.
—Julia Cameron,
The Artists Way
Don't wait for inspiration. It's a romantic notion that you wait around for that "aha!" revelation, and then work like mad to finish. The successful artist works day after day through blocks, bad habits, and distractions. There is no perfect time to begin. Begin now.
—Lee Silber
When
that time comes, I try to be alone and silent for several hours.; I
need a lot of time to rid my mind of the noise outside and to cleanse
my memory of life's confusion. I light candles to summon the muses and
guardian spirits. I place flowers on my desk to initiate tedium and
the complete works of Pablo Neruda beneath the computer with the hope
they will inspire me by osmosis. If computers can be infected with a
virus there's no reason why they shouldn't be refreshed by a breath of
poetry. In a secret ceremony I prepare my mind and soul to receive
the first sentence in a trance, so the door may open slightly and allow
me to peer through and perceive the hazy outlines of the story waiting
for me.
—'Paula' Isobel Allende
I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.
—Peter De Vries
The one mistake which is committed habitually by people who have the gift of half-genius, is waiting for inspiration.
—Philip Hamerton
Any thought that is passed on to the subconscious often enough and convincingly enough is finally accepted.
—Robert Collier
The artist must cultivate this mood, wait for it, and seek to stimulate it, sometimes by gazing at their paints or even brushing random patterns on the canvas . . . sparked by the artist’s encountering the brilliant colours on the palette or the inviting white roughness of the canvas . . . It is a waiting for the birthing process to begin to move.
—Rollo May,
The Courage to Create
I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women.
—Ruth Benedict
We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood without endeavoring to meet it half way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination . . . I am glad I have not followed in the steps of some of my Russian colleagues, who have no self-confidence and are so impatient that at the least difficulty they are ready to throw up the sponge. This is why, in spite of great gifts, they accomplish so little, and that in an amateur way.
Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.
—Virginia Woolf,
A Room of One's Own
The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.
