Muse Quotes - Page 5

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

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Writing, Work Ethic, Waiting

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

  Mickey Hart

  Music, Self, Expression

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• Happy is the man whom the Muses love: sweet speech flows from his mouth.

  Hesiod

  Sweet, Men, Flow

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• [My muse] likes to inhabit tea leaves, sunlight filtered through bamboo, melancholy clouds over the Devon coastline, a weedy railroad crossing in the Southern States, bubblegum pop from the sixties, torch songs from the forties, undersea caves where B-movie octopi grapple with men in loincloths, sacred groves of pink anime dryads, Victorian fairy paintings executed by gentlemen in lunatic asylums and so on.

  Quentin S. Crisp

  Song, Anime, Men

  Source: www.teemingbrain.com

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• The muses crown virtue when fortune refuses to do it.

  Elizabeth Montagu

  Crowns, Virtue, Fortune

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• But Fear and the Muse in turn guard the place
  Where the banished poet has gone
  And the night that comes with quickened pace
  Is ignorant of dawn.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Night, Poetry, Ignorant

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• I guess I'll just slip into the studio after the next time with the Muses, and then just keel over and die.

  Kristin Hersh

  Next, Keel, Studios

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• If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, "Wake up and write the book!

  Kerry Greenwood

  Book, Writing, Buns

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• My wife Ricky is my muse. Her personal style and natural beauty have always been my inspiration.

  Ralph Lauren

  Inspiration, Wife, Style

  Twitter post from Dec 03, 2013

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• Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Spiritual, Nature

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.238, Penguin

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• Like all writers, my greatest inspiration, my ultimate muse, is a deadline.

  Dave Barry

  Inspiration, Deadline, Ultimate

  "Secrets of a Two-Time Pulitzer Winner". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. June 30, 2010.

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• With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rose, Joy, Hilarity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.328, Library of America

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• Memory in Greek mythology is the mother of the muses, and it is so for me. Both personal and societal memory move me strongly, and that is one of the sources of my writing.

  Marge Piercy

  Mother, Memories, Moving

  Interview with Charlotte Templin, margepiercy.com. May 2004.

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• I don't have a muse. I have a mortgage.

  Jim Butcher

  Mortgage

  "'More of us should be hated and feared by our readers!'". The Fantasy Writers panel at NYCC, www.tor.com. October 9, 2010.

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• You should treat a muse like a fairy.

  Paulo Coelho

  Fairy, Should, Treats

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• I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Sky

  "My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)". Poem by Arthur Rimbaud, st. 1,

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• 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

  Writing, Given, Concrete

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• Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fitness, Health, Sleep

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.227

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• Muse of the many twinkling feet, whose charms are now extending up from legs to arms.

  Lord Byron

  Feet, Ballet, Legs

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• In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming. All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they compel you to get started.

  Twyla Tharp

  Creativity, Wrestling, Creative

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• What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse.

  Ray Bradbury

  Men, Creative, Aspect

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• The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

  David Antin

  Memories, Anxiety, Greek

  "A Conversation with David Antin". Book by David Antin, Charles Bernstein, 2002.

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

  Gore Vidal

  Coffee, Movement, Firsts

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.59, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• It sounds insane, I know, but I think that - I'm so lucky because I basically am my own muse.

  Rumi Neely

  Thinking, Insane, Sound

  Source: www.elle.com

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• Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine:
  A tenth is Sappho, maid divine.

  Plato

  Maids, Nine, Divine

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