Quotable Quotes for $200, Alex!

One of my favorite things to is finding and collecting quotes that I find inspirational to me, as both a writer and as a human. They range in diversity, of the people quoted as well as the ideas and the intent behind those ideas. I have included some below that I have truly enlightening and hope that you will do the same.



"Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others."

-Marianne Moore

"If one waits for the right time to come before writing, the right time never comes."

-James Russell Lowell

"Honesty is the essence of eloquence."

-James Cunningham

"You can never be sure that what you write is any good...If you have to be sure, don't write."

-John Berryman

Creators and artists possess the capacity "To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower."

-William Blake

"We are all bastards, but God loves us anyway."

-Will Campbell

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."

-Albert Einstein,

What I Believe

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love that is the soul of genius."

-Wolfgang A. Mozart

"Joy comes to those who have the heart to convert their pain into art."

-John D. Engle, Jr.

"When the Muse comes, She doesn't tell you to write/She says, get up for a minute, I've something to show you, stand here."

-Michael Goldman

"Never lose a holy curiosity."

-Albert Einstein

"There are two ways of spreading light:To be the candle or to be the mirror that reflects it."

-Edith Wharton

"Be what you is 'cuz if you be what you ain't, then you ain't what you is."(I didn't make this up, I swear!)

-Anonymous

"Be dignified enough to make your statement. Don't leave the earth until you do."

-Leo Buscaglia

"The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe."

-David Hare

"The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question."

-James Joyce

"The real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render what Joyce has called the 'radiance' of all things, as an epiphany or showing forth of their truth."

-Joseph Campbell

"The sacred obligation of the poet is to find, is it not?"

-David Citino

"Writing poetry is like daring to dance with the demons inside you. A poem is a howl against the darkness around us."

John Mason

"If you write, you're a writer. You need no one else's validation."

-Marshall J. Cook

"Be mundane and commonplace in your life so you can be insane in your art."

-Gustave Flaubert

"I'm suggesting that one try to listen to one's heart. And tell the truth."

"I do know that great art can only be created out of love..."

-James Baldwin

"Ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night, must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple 'I must', then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it."

-Rainer Maria Rilke,

Letter To A Young Poet