Quotes About The Muse

#1. If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

#2. The muse of invention handed me a rifle and I shot a white bear who sat down and said: Ah.

Vladimir Nabokov

#3. The muse doesn't come without being called.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

#4. The Muse is mute when public men
Applaud a modern throne.

William Butler Yeats

#5. The muse on my shoulder is very sensitive and does not abide claptrap of any kind ... Only when I am totally immersed ... absorbed in work ... does she allow something magical to happen and I become aware of a faint heartbeat and gentle breath emanating from my brush.

Catherine Stock

#6. Rhyme and meter force gaps in meaning so the muse can enter.

Mason Cooley

#7. Obey the muse, Liz said. She's a fickle mistress.

Gayle Forman

#8. Nothing which is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be changed from its own to another language without destroying its sweetness

Dante Alighieri

#9. All men owe honor to the poets - honor and awe; for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.

Homer

#10. I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.

John Updike

#11. (1) the Muse visits during, not before, the act of composition, and (2) the writer takes dictation from that place in his mind that knows what he should write next.

Roger Ebert

#12. One of the benefits of having an audience is that it requires a regimen, a need to create on a regular basis. I don't believe in waiting for the muse to visit.

Keri Smith

#13. I wake up in the morning, or the middle of the night when an idea comes through. My songwriting style, basically I just write down information given to me from the muse and how that works for songwriters. Record the muse and the muse delivers.

Creed Bratton

#14. I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.

Eric Clapton

#15. The "lone genius" myth: An individual with superhuman talents appears out of nowhere at certain points in history, free of influences or precedent, with a direct connection to God or The Muse.

Austin Kleon

#16. The professional will not tolerate disorder ... He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

Steven Pressfield

#17. But the fact is, she [the muse] won't be summoned. She alights when it damn well pleases her. She falls in love with one artist, then deserts him for another. She's a real bitch!

Erica Jong

#18. You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

Barbara Kingsolver

#19. Love passed, the Muse appeared, the weather
of mind got clarity new-found;
now free, I once more weave together
emotion, thought, and magic sound.

Alexander Pushkin

#20. The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.

Roger Ebert

#21. The 'Muse' is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.

Roman Payne

#22. The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don't wait for her. Start alone.

Roger Ebert

#23. In my perfect imagination, with stern discipline I rise with the first bird, salute the dawn, have a healthy breakfast of fruits, wander over to my faux-oak desk, tap the On button on my Macbook Air, acknowledge the muse, and skip into the world where the story flows over the day and into the night.

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

#24. As the falcon launched trustingly heavenward is lost to view, the course of the higher poetry often soars beyond the ken of the multitude; and, as the humble birds carol blithely round our dwellings, so the meeker lays of the muse linger tunefully about the heart.

Henry Theodore Tuckerman

#25. Discipline is what makes a writer. If writing was like lifting weights, then I'd look like Mr. Universe. Write every day. Give the Muse a chance to get to know you.

Tony D'Souza

#26. Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

Nick Cave

#27. I am a big advocate for having an open discussion about team norms and preferences. At The Muse, some of us like to start working at 7:30 A.M. Others focus best from 10 P.M. to 2 A.M. Create a culture where it's acceptable not to be working when someone else is working.

Kathryn Minshew

#28. You're best when you're not in charge. The ego locks the muse.

Robin Williams

#29. Your concert-goer, though he feed upon symphony as a lamb upon milk, is no true lover if he play no instrument. Your true lover does more than admire the muse; he sweats a little in her service.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

#30. Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

Brian Keene

#31. It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

William Butler Yeats

#32. I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#33. Angel and Muse approach from without; the Angel sheds light and the Muse gives form (Hesiod learned of them). Gold leaf or chiton-folds: the poet finds his models in his laurel coppice. But the Duende, on the other hand, must come to life in the nethermost recesses of the blood.

Federico Garcia Lorca

#34. Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#35. When you craft something you create an eternity. When you tear down you hurt and you destroy, but anger doesn't last forever and soon your destruction is but dust under the muse of another's creation.

Matthew Williamson

#36. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse.

Henry David Thoreau

#37. In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

James Taylor

#38. When the muse hits me, or the mood, or whatever it is, I get my guitar out and I empty it out. I just start going through things to see what's going to happen.

Lucinda Williams

#39. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.

Isabel Allende

#40. Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

George Santayana

#41. You can wait forever for the muse to sit on your shoulder, but most of the time you know what has to be done and inspiration is not going to help you.

Nick Hornby

#42. When two souls compose a single song, The muse fans Livid wrath before long.

Euripides

#43. In spite of Virtue and the Muse,
Nemesis will have her dues,
And all our struggles and our toils
Tighter wind the giant coils.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#44. It's only those exceptional and rare individuals who have brilliant ideas delivered to them by the muse, complete and gift wrapped. The rest of us have to work at it.

Alan Moore

#45. Often the Muse will not respond to direct and logical requests. She must be lured in with the playful and gentle.

Jill Badonsky

#46. A lot of my writer friends - some of whom are brilliant - work when the Muse calls them, for lack of a better description. You know, days of nothing, then this creative burst where they write for 36 hours straight fueled by caffeine and idealism.

G. Willow Wilson

#47. Start writing, and the muse will come. Not every time, but keep at it, and the muse will come enough for you to get the initial writing done.

Sam Barry

#48. I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

Jackie DeShannon

#49. First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.

Gore Vidal

#50. Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.

Joseph Campbell

#51. The adventure of composition is a mystery. The muse has her ways, she hides from you, comes for you in the middle of the night, at midday, at dawn. You must believe wholeheartedly in this divine power. Its an elusive gift that can appear at any time, anywhere. Artists are in awe of it.

Mickey Hart

#52. He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.

Plato

#53. The Muse gave the Greeks genius and the art of the well-turned phrase.

Horace

#54. The muse is the mystic force, but you are the master.

A.D. Posey

#55. Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

Susan Sontag

#56. Virtue runs before the muse,
and defies her skill;
she is rapt and doth refuse
to wait a painter's will.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#57. Cheat your landlord if you can
and must
but do not try to shortchange the Muse.

William S. Burroughs

#58. It's hard to act in the morning. The muse isn't even awake.

Keanu Reeves

#59. I was the muse of Tom Ford and Gucci for years, but that was a long time ago.

Carine Roitfeld

#60. Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

Barbara Kingsolver

#61. Every time I hear writers talk about 'the muse,' I just want to bitch-slap them. It's a job. Do your job.

Nora Roberts

#62. My mum is deeply, deeply a man's woman, a man's muse. Maybe because I'm a kid from the '80s, I'm a bit more dominant. I wanted to be the muse and the director also. I wanted to be the man and the woman.

Lou Doillon

#63. In the fairy tale the painting represents the here and now. The book is actually divided into five sections, through which the key character, the muse, leads us.

Kit Williams

#64. I think being consistent is really important. In the arts there's a misconception that you sit around waiting for the muse to come, and that it's all really mystical and mysterious. In reality, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it.

Ayana Mathis

#65. The essential truth is that sometimes you're worried that they'll find out it's a fluke, that you don't really have it. You've lost the muse or - the worst dread - you never had it at all. I went through all that madness early on.

Robin Williams

#66. I'm not a big fan of inspiration. I'm too old to sit and wait for the muse to give me a little kiss ... I write a lot, and I'm not afraid to make mistakes or to write badly. I can alsways fix something weak and dull. But I can't fix a blank page.

Ron Koertge

#67. Lately the muse has been treating me like Ike treated Tina.

Quentin R. Bufogle

#68. Thus does the Muse herself move men divinely inspired, and through them thus inspired a Chain hangs together of others inspired divinely likewise.

Plato

#69. I'll be blasted', he said, 'if I ever write another word, or try to write another word, to please Nick Greene or the Muse. Bad, good, or indifferent, I'll write, from this day forward, to please myself

Virginia Woolf

#70. In spite of its romantic frisson, the position of muse is very vague and largely thankless for the muse herself.

Katie Roiphe

#71. Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader browner shade; Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade, Beside some water's rushy brink With me the Muse shall sit, and think.

Thomas Gray

#72. For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue - that I had to do the job myself.

Anais Nin

#73. There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.

Sappho

#74. The muse does not allow the praise-de-serving here to die: she enthrones him in the heavens.

Horace

#75. The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while 'Foster the People' plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.

Maggie Stiefvater

#76. The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs.

Plato

#77. But the muse won't always cooperate and she will never be coerced. Sometimes she'd rather take a nap or see a mid-afternoon movie.

Jonathan Tropper

#78. No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say, and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.

Seth Godin

#79. Be determined. Be persistent. Be consistent," the muse said. "Then he looked at me and winked. "Never give up, dumb-ass.

Lani Brown

#80. The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings.

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

#81. I too am a poet who has found some favour with the Muse. I too have written songs. I too have heard the shepherds call me bard. But I take it from them with a grain of salt: I have the feeling that I cannot yet compare with Varius or Cinna, but cackle like a goose among melodious swans.

Virgil

#82. Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.

Jodi Picoult

#83. The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up.

Isabel Allende

#84. There is something else at work here that is beyond me - and that is Laura. She has a life of her own. There is a magic in her. The muse is in her. And I'm lucky to have her in my life.

Genie Francis

#85. [The Muse of our Fiction of the future] will lead you - if you are humble and honest with her - straight into a World of Working Men, crude of speech, swift of action, strong of passion, straight to the heart of a new life.

Frank Norris

#86. Inspiration is a message-in-a-bo ttle from the distant shore, a window into the other world, a tap of the muse's finger, the grace of the gods. It comes when you least expect it ...

Phil Cousineau

#87. I was the first to bring the Muse into my country.

Virgil

#88. The muse is fickle; ergo, when she knocks, ANSWER! It may take a while, but trust me, she WILL knock. In the meantime, keep your ear pressed firmly to the door.

Quentin R. Bufogle

#89. Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness.

Steven Pressfield

#90. You say, "Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse." And that's enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.

Alan Lightman

#91. Poetry is not a mere expression of a poet's self, but an enchantment, a spell of the muse, the inspiration. Poetry is thus magic and magic is poetry.

Shilpa Sandesh

#92. But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.

Ian Hamilton Finlay

#93. Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.

Henry David Thoreau

#94. The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.

Glen Hansard

#95. You want to write? Write.

Don't wait for the muse. Write.

Just plant your butt in a chair and write.

James V. Smith Jr.

#96. Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.

Robert Genn

#97. True poetry (inspired by the Muse and her prime symbol, the moon) even today is a survival, or intuitive re-creation, of the ancient Goddess-worship.

Robert Graves

#98. What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,'.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.

Maya Angelou

#99. The muse of music isn't just from Greek mythology, but living in people like the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin.

Ernie Isley

#100. Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.

Stephen Nachmanovitch