The Muse Quotes

Real writers write. Period. No, the muse does not come to visit everyday. She's a lazy, precocious flirt. You cannot get into the habit of being "in the mood" to write. No writer on Earth is in the mood to write everyday, but the good ones do it anyway. They fight through their fatigue, their stress, their doubt, and they write. They get the words on the page. Period.
So stop waiting for your muse. Trust me, she sleeps around. ~ Darynda Jones

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

Rhyme and meter force gaps in meaning so the muse can enter. ~ Mason Cooley

Was there a magical love-of-the-dance moment, when the muse Terpsichore called to us and we lifted our arms and spun at one with the divine music of the Universe? I think not. Although pride and obsession can feel like love, I guess. ~ Meg Howrey

Forcing the muse to let thoughts flow; equals to pushing a child, into labor. ~ Aniruddha Sastikar

Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse. ~ Robert Genn

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

I have never experienced writers block and I've written every day since June 1972. But I have experienced the need to get up and walk around, eat ice cream, let ideas percolate, forget the story for a time, and then return to the page. Even the muse needs a vacation to rest up before she gives more of herself. ~ Jan Marquart

Give all to love: Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,- Nothing refuse. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow. ~ Peter S. Beagle

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

There is indeed a poetical attitude to be adopted towards all things, but all things are not fit subjects for poetry. Into the secure and sacred house of Beauty the true artist will admit nothing that is harsh or disturbing, nothing that gives pain, nothing that is debatable, nothing about which men argue. He can steep himself, if he wishes, in the discussion of all the social problems of his day, poor-laws and local taxation, free trade and bimetallic currency, and the like; but when he writes on these subjects it will be, as Milton nobly expressed it, with his left hand, in prose and not in verse, in a pamphlet and not in a lyric. This exquisite spirit of artistic choice was not in Byron: Wordsworth had it not. In the work of both these men there is much that we have to reject, much that does not give us that sense of calm and perfect repose which should be the effect of all fine, imaginative work. But in Keats it seemed to have been incarnate, and in his lovely ODE ON A GRECIAN URN it found its most secure and faultless expression; in the pageant of the EARTHLY PARADISE and the knights and ladies of Burne-Jones it is the one dominant note. It is to no avail that the Muse of Poetry be called, even by such a clarion note as Whitman's, to migrate from Greece and Ionia and to placard REMOVED and TO LET on the rocks of the snowy Parnassus. Calliope's call is not yet closed, nor are the epics of Asia ended; the Sphinx is not yet silent, nor the fountain of Castaly dry. For art i ~ Oscar Wilde

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

Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the butt and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, a million glass panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain's contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
other why didn't you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun-coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
draw and elevate Shubha in to my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Kolkata seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But i do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of sheddi ~ Malay Roychoudhury

While the concept of the muse is noteworthy, the development of the muse has changed substantially in today's online world. The tables have practically turned as the artist who is responsible for creating music in today's world is now being the muse to others. They have been responsible for the creation of "fan art," a style of performance where people create new forms of media based off of existing creations.
It was originally that the muse was what prompted the artist to create something new. Today it has changed to where the artist is the muse to others in society. ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

Sometimes the writing flows, sometimes it's like wading through concrete. But I keep showing up each day, whether the Muse joins me or not. ~ Bruce Hale

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

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

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

Truth? Sometimes I question every last thing I'm doing.
Truth? Right now, those questions swirl every damn day.
Is this also true for you?
Still, we keep moving forward, you and I. We try new things. We doggedly keep on doing the old things because though they may not have worked in the past it doesn't feel like crazy to continue, it feels like the space of trusting some wild sort of knowing. We love, good and hard. We show up for life. In the midst of depression, insanely messy houses, and bank accounts sliding closer and closer to that fine red line, and panic attacks, and kids who won't listen but who damn well know how to question and love.
And we make stuff. My god, the way we keep on making stuff. Because we can and we have to. Because it's the only damn thing that feels right when everything else feels a hundred kinds of wrong. We create. Defiant and determined and true. Weary hearts brought to blazing life if only for those wild moments we dance with the muse. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

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

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

Where do you get your stories?" the interviewer asked. It was a typical question.
Ben had answered it himself once. He believed that writers gathered sensory data from dreams and experiences, and then in the imagination all that information stirred up like celestial dust into giant pillars of creation, where all that data bonded together into characters, settings, an entire universe.
Fleischer, however, believed that stories came from a much different place. He believed that all good wrtiers were simply tools for a greater force.
"Call it the Muse, call it Gan, call it God, or whatever you want. I personally don't have a name for it. But you know you're in it's grip when the story just flows through you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. At that point... you're just a pen. ~ David Jacob Knight

There's more mystical nonsense written about the process of writing than almost anything. Inspiration, genius, "the muse." So I want to lay out one huge, comforting, wonderful fact: the more you write, the better you get at it. Writing is like a forehand or driving a car or playing guitar. Practice makes you better.

That's not to say inspiration and genius don't exist. Not everyone can become Tolstoy through hard work. What it means is that, wherever you start, you can improve. And the way to do it is to write a lot.

I mentioned at the start of this piece that I've published eight books. When I flip through the first one now, I can't believe it ever made it onto shelves. I see so many flaws and problems in it that I'm amazed. The reason is that I've written hundreds of thousands of words between since then. As long as you produce a little something every day, every week, in time, invisibly, you'll get better. Trailing behind every successful writer are a million words that never saw the light of day. Sometimes it takes five million words. The most important piece of writing advice anyone can give or get is simple, and therefore can seem uninteresting, but it's true: just keep writing. ~ Charles Finch

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. ~ Wendell Berry

I believe in previous lives and the Muse - and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration whom we call artists. ~ Steven Pressfield

Every so often every artist feels, 'I'll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.' In 1985, I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself - Don't push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away. ~ Helen Frankenthaler

be they lawyers soldiers princesses prostitutes actors activists or acrobats on five continents in dozens of countries in the world the women are lying down for the men the men of many museums (in 'At the musée de l'homme') ~ Evie Shockley

Life is the muse which perfectly rhymes,
Plays with the words and fills empty lines.

For some, life is battle for others, it's dance
For rich it is a party for the poor it is chance.

For lovers, it's dizziness, it's a dream, it's romance
For Artist it's drop of the rain on his hands.

For a writer, it's a story for an actor it's stage
For painter it's a canvas for thief, it's the cage.

For you it might be the money you blew
For someone the entire life could be you! ~ Nino Varsimashvili

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.

You are so much more than I could have ever wished for. ~ Cate Mullen ~ Chris Kuhn

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

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

But the point is, when the writer turns to address the reader, he or she must not only speak to me - naively dazzled and wholly enchanted by the complexities of the trickery, and thus all but incapable of any criticism, so that, indeed, he can claim, if he likes, priestly contact with the greater powers that, hurled at him by the muse, travel the parsecs from the Universe's furthest shoals, cleaving stars on the way, to shatter the specific moment and sizzle his brains in their pan, rattle his teeth in their sockets, make his muscles howl against his bones, and to galvanize his pen so the ink bubbles and blisters on the nib (nor would I hear her claim to such as other than a metaphor for the most profound truths of skill, craft, or mathematical and historical conjuration) - but she or he must also speak to my student, for whom it was an okay story, with just so much description. ~ Samuel R. Delany

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

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

Discipline, not the Muse, results in productivity. If you write only when she beckons, your writing is not yours at all. ~ Kenneth Atchity

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. ~ Isabel Allende

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

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

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

On the raptors kept for falconry:
"They talk every night, deep into the darkness. They say about how they were taken, about what they can remember about their homes, about their lineage and the great deeds of their ancestors, about their training and what they've learned and will learn. It is military conversation, really, like what you might have in the mess of a crack cavalry regiment: tactics, small arms, maintenance, betting, famous hunts, wine, women, and song. Another subject they have is food. It is a depressing thought," he continued, "but of course they are mainly trained by hunger. They are a hungry lot, poor chaps, thinking of the best restaurants where they used to go, and how they had champagne and caviar and gypsy music. Of course, they all come from noble blood."
"What a shame that they should be kept prisoners and hungry."
"Well, they do not really understand that they are prisoners any more than the cavalry officers do. They look on themselves as being 'dedicated to their profession,' like an order of knighthood or something of that sort. You see, the member of the Muse [where Raptors are kept for falconry] is restricted to the Raptors, and that does help a lot. They know that none of the lower classes can get in. Their screened perches do not carry Blackbirds or such trash as that. And then, as for the hungry part, they're far from starving or that kind of hunger: they're in training, you know! And like everybody in strict training, they think ~ T.H. White

Of course, one might object that it is impossible for one person, one woman, to represent the ideal of both agape and eros. If you will allow my indulgence for a moment, I will suggest that such skepticism is a form of misogyny. For only a misogynist would argue that women are either saints or seductresses - virgins and whores. Of course, a woman, or a man for that matter, can be both - the muse can be lover to both soul and body. ~ Sylvain Reynard

Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, "Woo the muse of the odd." You may be a geek. You may have geek written all over you. You should aim to be one geek they'll never forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don't hope that straight people will keep you on as some sort of pet. To hell with them. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird, and don't do it halfway. Put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it. Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish. ~ Bruce Sterling

Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition. ~ Maurice Chevalier

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

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

in astronomy class, the muse urania angrily watches a panel of men talk about the wonders of the stars as though they created them. ~ Salma Deera

Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce ... Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too. ~ Sarah Waters

In spite of its romantic frisson, the position of muse is very vague and largely thankless for the muse herself. ~ Katie Roiphe

When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go ... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back! ~ Judy Collins

It's the witching hour once more-
When the Muse comes out to play.
He calls me through that magic door-
Where galaxies of worlds await! ~ Belle Whittington

One's-Self I Sing
One's-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say
the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing. ~ Walt Whitman

You are my favorite thing to do. ~ Oliver Sand ~ Chris Kuhn

The muse in charge of fantasy wears good, sensible shoes. ~ Lloyd Alexander

I wonder why anyone would hesitate to be generous with their writing. I mean, if you really want to make a living, go to Wall Street and trade oil futures ... We're writers. We're doing something that is inherently a generous act. We're exposing ourselves to the muse and to the things that frighten us. Why do that if you're not willing to be generous? And paradoxically, almost ironically, it turns out that the more generous you are, the more money you make. But that's secondary. For me, the privilege of being generous is why I get to do this. ~ Seth Godin

You learn to write the same way you learn to play golf... You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn't divinely inspired – it's hard work. ~ Tom Clancy

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

Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch. ~ Lili St. Crow

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

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

Auden believed that a life of such military precision was essential to his creativity, a way of taming the muse to his own schedule. "A modern stoic," he observed, "knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble. ~ Mason Currey

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

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

Cicala to cicala is dear, and ant to ant, and hawks to hawks, but to me the muse and song. ~ Theocritus

Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which, as I am saying, receive the power of the original magnet from one another? The rhapsode like yourself and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet himself is the first of them. Through all these the God sways the souls of men in any direction which he pleases, and makes one man hang down from another. Thus there is a vast chain of dancers and masters and undermasters of choruses, who are suspended, as if from the stone, at the side of the rings which hang down from the Muse. And every poet has some Muse from whom he is suspended, and by whom he is said to be possessed, which is nearly the
Ion 5
same thing; for he is taken hold of. ~ Socrates

Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

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

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

You know, it's the same thing as the question of free will and destiny, the question of creativity - you, the artist, you're not the puppet of the piano, you're not the puppet of the muse, but you're not its master, either. It's a relationship, it's a conversation, and all it wants is to be treated with respect and dignity - and it will return ten thousand times over. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

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

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

I was the muse of Tom Ford and Gucci for years, but that was a long time ago. ~ Carine Roitfeld

I'm truly, 100% guided by the characters and my Muse. If one of the characters suddenly decided to do something very different, I'd just go with it. It's much easier to let the Muse drive than for me to try to steer. ~ Lori Foster

I'll tell you what I miss.
I miss that throbbing heart telling me to take a leap when the sky looks too dark.
I miss the walk that I took in the narrow cobblestoned pathways that fumed of history and undying stories of love and loss.
I miss the coffee that scented like mist in a frozen dream in a land of strange beauty.
I miss the afternoon tea that followed my pen to hours of happy melancholy.
I miss the muse I saw dance in a foreign land of near heart.
I miss the stranger smiling at me from a corner and teaching me his language to smile at my twinkled happiness.
I miss that symphony of mad evenings ending in a sky full of stars to fill my soul with an unknown ecstasy.
I miss that hand of an old woman trying to tell me her story.
I miss that child running up to me in a crowd of unknown faces to hand me her candy.
I miss that night where I lay back on a distant balcony gazing at the solitary moon for hours knowing that it is shining at my homeland just as bright.
I miss that stranger listening to my heart and telling me how beautiful it is.
I miss a wandering soul, who went on filling her breath with life of eternal love in the wings of Life.
And I'll tell you now when I look back I see how wonderful Time has treated me and how grateful I am to have lived in moments that roar of a beautiful Life lived with a heart throbbing to take a leap once again in that ocean of Life's beguiling journey. ~ Debatrayee Banerjee

I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them. ~ Isabel Allende

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

The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life. ~ Alexander Pope

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

The Rolling Stone magazine: " Jarrett… demonstrated his strengths – his sure times, his far-ranging imagination, his sharply-honed technique and his particular inner fire, which is at once steady and vulnerable. When he plays alone, Jarrett pushes his creativity to its limits. It's almost scary to hear someone who apparently relies so totally on the spirited, flowing, almost effusive directions of his muse, yet the muse seems to never let him down. ~ Ian Carr

When he craved contact, he stopped in to visit the Cézannes and Monets at the Musée du Luxembourg, believing they had already done what he was striving for - distilling places and people and objects to their essential qualities. ~ Paula McLain

As I read my poems aloud, I paid still more attention to sound in my writing. One morning as I revised, I set down a word that I knew was not right, and I heard myself think: But I can say it so that it's right. Immediately, I knew that I had understood one of the hazards of reading aloud. Performance can paper over bad writing, or substitute for the best language. Performance is a problem, and most performance poets or slammers are actors or standup comedians and not poets; we never hear a line break and seldom a new metaphor. There are other problems with the popularity of the poetry reading, but largely the reading has been good for poetry because poets watch their own poems come back to them on the faces of listeners. One addresses not only the Muse but actual people. ~ Donald Hall

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

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

In the TV business, you've got to write fast, and someone will tell you, "Can you rewrite this episode before ... 6 p.m.?" So that's when you rewrite it. You can't wait for the muse to show up. ~ Noah Hawley

In short, if the Muse exists, she does not whisper to the untalented. ~ Steven Pressfield

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

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

My idea of storytelling is-I wouldn't say it's religious but I would say it's spiritual. You know, the chemist Friedrich August Kekule worked for twenty years trying to figure out the structure of the benzene ring, and he couldn't do it. And then one night he was sleeping and he had a vision of a snake swallowing its tail. So he told his students about it and they said, 'Not bad, you go to sleep and you wake up with that.' And he said, 'Visions come to prepared spirits.' The way Billy Wilder put it was 'The muse has to know where to find you.' ~ David Milch

We cannot read the same works forever. Our honey-moon, even though we wed the Muse, must come to an end; and it is followed by indifference, if not by disgust. ~ William Hazlitt

Music gives the soul this inner self-expression, a voice. It gives the soul a sound, the sound of the Muse. ~ Mickey Hart

Really, whatever I was seeking and looking into in those days like creative arts, chant, the muse being in touch with the muse for poetry and writing and music. It's all part of the spirit and if we look particularly at Hinduism and Buddhism, the tantric stream of those traditions totally embraces all aspects of human life and life on this world. ~ Surya Das

You have that faraway look in your eyes that makes me want to pull you into my dreams, bring you to your knees worshiping me - desperately. You, the nectar and the muse of my poetry. ~ Melody Lee

The Muse gave the Greeks genius and the art of the well-turned phrase. ~ Horace

What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophesy or as poesy ... should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open up new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth. ~ Margaret Fuller

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

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. ~ Terry Brooks

There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse. ~ Sappho

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

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