Inspired Books Quotes & Sayings

We needed to be autodidacts; we needed to pass books from hand to hand; we needed to search, and thus be inspired by hard-won effort to create ourselves. We needed to understand that there is power in searching and finding and not having things handed to us. — Kathleen Collins

Books never make religions, but religions make books. We must not forget that. No book ever created God, but God inspired all the great books. And no book ever created a soul. — Swami Vivekananda

To all my readers. I don't need my daughter's okay to do anything. I was a writer before she was my daughter. The CRANK books were inspired by my desire to keep others from following in her path, but they are FICTION. And seriously, WTF do I need her permission for? Are you effing kidding me? I'm her MOTHER. — Ellen Hopkins

People sometimes act as though owning books you haven't read constitutes a charade or pretense, but for me, there's a lovely mystery and pregnancy about a book that hasn't given itself over to you yet--sometimes I'm the most inspired by imagining what the contents of an unread book might be. ~ Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude — Leah Price

While the TV show 'Rizzoli & Isles' may have been inspired by my books, show runner Janet Tamaro has total control over where the TV characters go from there. As Janet once put it, I'm the birth mother, but she's the mother who adopted them, and now that Jane and Maura are living in her house, they have to do what she tells them to do. — Tess Gerritsen

I love a mysterious underground and have exploited this in many of my books: the ice tunnels of Greenland, the volcanic tubes of Iceland, the mysterious passageways beneath an ancient African hillside or a Buddhist monastery in central China. And of course, London's famous tube system, setting for my book LONDON UNDERGROUND. It's a funny sort of fixation, especially given my mother's claustrophobia, which I saw her deal with on many occasions. We once lined up to take a tour into the Lascaux Caverns in France to see the ancient cave paintings. My mother didn't make it past the first quirky turn into the depths, and she sent me on by myself. Given her interest in history and archaeology, which she used as the basis for a series of mysteries she published and which inspired my own writing, it always surprised me she still loved to write about places she could never visit. — Chris Angus

The Bible is the most inspired book of all times. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I am grateful to all my readers; you inspired me to keep writing. — Lailah Gifty Akita

There's something deep in the heart of every person that wants
to protect culture. The only thing about my pending career that
was changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,
not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarians
were only as important as the community they inspired. If I
was going to continue with this career, my job wouldn't be to protect
information, it would be to bring the community together and
inspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for. — Scott Douglas

An inspired and infallible passage whose meaning you cannot be sure of is not much more useful than an uninspired, fallible passage. — Robert M. Price

I've always been inspired by Don Quixote as a role model of sorts, of the power of books to sort of make you insane in maybe a beautiful way. — Jonathan Ames

I have a weird graphic I made for myself once, and it's the "lineage tree" of everyone that has inspired me and more importantly given me the permission to be myself in my work. There's a slew of people from theater: Erwin Piscator, Chekhov, Mac Wellman, Stein; and then a whole lot of wonderful works that are called novels: everything from Tristram Shandy to Bouvard and Pecuchet, to Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas, and Finnegan's Wake and Invisible Man, and then contemporary writers I'm currently reading like Renee Gladman and Anakana Schofield. There are many more in my graphic also: there's Beckett's novels and Melancholy of Resistance, and there's Reznikoff and Dos Passos, there are contemporary poets I admire like Jena Osman, dance-writers like Michelle Ellsworth, and books I can't help read for fun like Muriel Spark. But there's Groucho Marx and Oscar Wilde. It's a huge question and the answers would likely change daily. But these I'm talking about here are in the pantheon. — Thalia Field

I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library. — John Lewis

My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is. — Patricia MacLachlan

Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads. — Cornelia Funke

The Christians and the Jews do not believe that the Bible is the verbatim words of God. In fact it is clear that the books of the Bible are written by men - allegedly inspired men - but humans nonetheless. God in the Bible is spoken of in third person. This gives the believer a degree of caution. If the writers of the Bible were humans and humans are fallible, the Bible should not be taken literally. It is possible to interpret it, use one's logic to understand it in the light of science and adapt its teachings to meet the needs of the time. — Ali Sina

While novels are fiction, mine are usually very close to my heart. Like my other books, 'The Lemon Orchard' is inspired by something I care about. I care so deeply. The stories are my dreams, and I want to do a lot of research. Roberto is based on a real live friend of mine named Armando who worked in my garden. — Luanne Rice

My books are inspired by children - sometimes my own.
My writing is powered by chocolate - not always my own! — Cas Lester

I've always been a firm believer that love conquers all and that every woman's experience is a story in itself. Life is a never-ending journey and my imagination and experiences have inspired me to write powerful stories. Although my books are fiction, my goal is to offer compelling lessons about life and love. The message I wish to convey to my readers is that despite the many challenges we face in this world, we must have hope and faith. Overall, it is love that binds us together. — Geraldine Solon

...a book provides for a distillation of our sporadic mind, a record of its most vital manifestations, a concentration of inspired moments that might originally have arisen across a multitude of years and been separated by extended stretches of bovine gazing. To meet an author whose books one has enjoyed must, in this view, necessarily be a disappointment... because such a meeting can only reveal a person as he exists within, and finds himself subject to, the limitations of time. — Alain De Botton

I went from escaping into books to extracting things from them, from being inspired by books to trying to do things that inspired me - many of which I first encountered in stories. I went from wishing I were like a character in books to being a character in my books. I went from reading books to wrestling with them to writing them, all the while still learning from what I read. The — Pamela Paul

In high school, I was lucky enough to have a big group of girlfriends that have really inspired a lot of the stories in my books. I'm still close with my friends from that time, so it's never very hard to put myself back into that place, that voice. — Sarah Dessen

A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough ... [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror. — Voltaire

I will never be able to read my mothers favourite books without thinking of her - an when I pass them on or recommend them, I'll know that some of what made her goes with them; that some of my mother will live on in those readers, readers who may be inspired to love the way loved and do their own version of what she did in the world. — Will Schwalbe

A love of books has opened so many doors for me. Stories have inspired me and taught me to aspire. — Malorie Blackman

Damn, but it was a night, Ned! Now, not to be outdone, it appears our reverend mother Hayes is inspired by Captain Cook's latest voyage to the South Pacific."
"I give the woman credit for creativity." Ned laughed. "Have you read John Hawkesworth's account of the voyage?"
Ludovic's brows lifted ever so slightly. "Come now, Ned, do I truly look like a man who entertains himself with books? — Victoria Vane

Yet Katie held fast to the dream that perhaps there were men in the world who appreciated good women - men capable of loving a woman enough to die for her.
Something had to inspire the heroes in fairy tales and books.
Her Aunt Augusta always said it was only womenfolk's eternal wish for better men that inspired such stories ... but Katie liked to believe that living or, at least, once-living men inspired them. — Marcia Lynn McClure

I could leave the world of the book enthralled and inspired, but the real world awaited me, to caress or to kick me; reality was a powerful force that could not be ignored. — Sara Niles

THE MANY FACES OF SURVIVAL
Sunday, August 10th at 2:00 PST
Dachau Liberator, medical whistle-blower, award winning writer, college professor and world renowned garlic farmer, Chester Aaron, talks about the hard choices he's had to make, why he made them, and how it's changed his life.
Mr. Aaron was recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, and received the Huntington Hartford Foundation fellowship which was chaired by Aldous Huxley and Tomas Mann. He also inspired Ralph Nader to expose the over-radiation of blacks in American hospitals.
Now Mr. Aaron is a world-renowned garlic farmer who spends his days writing about the liberation of Dachau. He is 86 years old and he has a thousand stories to tell. Although he has published over 17 books, he is still writing more and looks forward to publishing again soon. — Judy Gregerson

I read a lot of books. So, usually when I go home I try to re-charge my batteries and absorb new stories to become inspired again. — Mia Wasikowska

In 2002, after the huge success of Who Moved my Cheese? a management manual that sold 1.6million copies in China, there was a rush of books inspired by it.

Titles included Whose Cheese Should I Move?; Can I Move Your Cheese?; Who Dares to Move my Cheese?; I Don't Bother to Move Your Cheese; Agitating, Alluring Cheese; No One Can Move My Cheese! The New Allegory of Cheese; Make the Cheese by Yourself!; A Piece of Cheese: Reading World Famous Fairy Tales; Management Advice 52 from the Cheese; and No More Cheese!

Finally, there was my personal favorite: Chinese People Eat Cheese? - Who Took My Meat Bun? — Rachel DeWoskin

I don't need the water to be inspired. My stories inspire me, not the location of where I'm parked. And good thing, since I've had to finish books in airports, in the RV we used to have, the lake house, while on vacation, at home, in the kitchen when my office PC was on the fritz. — Lori Foster

There have been a lot of roles and scripts that have come my way but nothing that really inspired me or intrigued me like when "Burlesque" showed up at my door. Just the whole concept of burlesque, I've always been fascinated with it. I've always collected so many books about burlesque. I've been intrigued by the time that it's set in, in the 20's, 30's, 40's and so I knew it was a no brainer for me to be a part of once I met with the team. — Christina Aguilera

Books on scientific photography with such beauty, breadth, and insight are rare. Felice Frankel's Envisioning Science is chock full of mind-boggling images and valuable information
not only for curious artists, students, and lay people, but also for seasoned researchers and photographers. The eclectic Frankel is both a scientist and photographer, and with the cold logic of the one and the inspired vision of the other, she covers an array of topics sure to stimulate your imagination and sense of wonder at the incredible vastness of the physical world. — Clifford A. Pickover

Illuminated by the gospel, we now perceive and enjoy God's truth, goodness, and beauty - whether it's in the blazing sun of the inspired Word of God, in the moonlight of creation, or in the starlight of great books. — Tony Reinke

I heard of Martin Luther King Jr. when I was 15 years old. I heard of Rosa Parks. And I met Dr. King in 1958 at the age of 18. I met Rosa Parks ... But to pick up a fun comic book - some people used to call them "funny books" - to pick this little book up, it sold for 10 cents, 12 pages or 14 pages? 14 pages I digested. And it inspired me. And I said to myself, "If the people of Montgomery can do this, maybe I can do something. Maybe I can make a contribution." — John Lewis

If it is in your heart, write it. And if it is in your mind, share it. Someone, somewhere, will be inspired. — Julia Skyler

How I get inspired?? (Good question!)
I just read stuff which make me to get inspired, like horror, like facts, like books which give me the chance to look over the goverment...
However I watch films like The Den, Truth or Die, Unknown 2011, Unknown 2015, You can't kill Stephen King, Dreamscapes and Nightmares, Breaking Bad, Monk and many others this series, films put me in Different situations and I just need to solve them...
My life the whole is just an example what I mustn't do and somehow this make me inspired! — Deyth Banger

I can read books and news articles about people who have excelled, people who have done extremely well in their chosen field, or made a lot of money, or married well, or what have you. When some people read this stuff, they get inspired, but when I read it, it makes me feel worse. Sometimes I wish I had never learned to read. — John S. Hall

One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. — F.F. Bruce

God is going to reveal to us things He never revealed before if we put our hands in His. No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way of doing it are revealed to me. I never have to grope for methods. The method is revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain I would be helpless. — George Washington Carver

As a child, we couldn't afford holidays overseas, so instead I travelled through books. I was inspired by Dr Dolittle and Tarzan. — Jane Goodall

I was inspired to write children's books, but without blood and gore. — Stanley Williams

The characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone. — Jean Genet

This book comes from the reflections and experience of more than forty years spent in court. Aside from the practice of my profession, the topics I have treated are such as have always held my interest and inspired a taste for books that discuss the human machine with its manifestations and the causes of its varied activity. — Clarence Darrow

And every writer cherishes the dream of setting the young on fire, even if only by a cigarette butt tossed casually over the shoulder, and when we meet young people who say that they were inspired by what we said to rush off and read the books we were talking about, we can congratulate ourselves for all those guilty hours when, the last two left after a long lunch, we went on arguing about everything we knew. — Clive James

Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, because "given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too deeply?"
In the end, Thoreau, Whitman, Hafiz, and a dozen other writers put me up to the task of seeing if I dared to "live a life worth living. — Dee Williams

For my books of nonfiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. I've been a Yankees and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades, so I wrote 'Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man.' It's more the story of his great courage than of his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges, and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig. — David A. Adler

He had been inspired to start a career in the porn industry after reading the incredible tale of a Japanese man who avenged the death of his sister by going down on her best friend for seven days and seven nights. — Mark Jackman

I became suspicious as I noticed things like the time lapses in the writing, contradicting books, questionable authenticity of the authorship of certain books, and the different forms the bible had taken over the years as the church continued to disagree over which books were inspired. I also noticed things in the bible I had somehow missed before. When I chose to read the bible without the filter that it was the infallible word of God, I started seeing some terribly atrocious things that God was responsible for: genocide, killing of women and children, killing non-believers, killing homosexuals, etc. When I considered these things combined with the idea of eternal torment for people who merely didn't share my faith, it no longer logically fit with the idea of a loving and compassionate God. Through — David G. McAfee

I am inspired by great food, theater, books, the beach, black-and-white photography, and great vocalists, like Dianne Reeves, Alice Smith, and Shirley Horn. I am inspired by my mentor Diana Castle, who is guiding me towards a truth and honesty in my life and work that I have always longed for. — Erica Tazel

He was inspired, and yet he wants books!
He had been preaching for thirty years, and yet he wants books!
He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books!
He had a wider experience than most men do, and yet he wants books!
He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things that it was not lawful for a man to utter, and yet he wants books!
He had written a major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

And then he tells her stories. Myths he learned from his instructor. Fantasies he created himself, inspired by bits and pieces of others read in archaic books with crackling spines. — Erin Morgenstern

I am inspired by positive people who have overcome difficult obstacles, motivational/spiritual books, nature, and my kids. — Andrea Navedo

Unless you first do the hard work of answering those questions about a text, your meditations won't be grounded in what God is actually saying in the passage. Something in the passage may "hit" you - but it may hit you as expressing almost the opposite of what the biblical author, inspired by the Spirit, was saying. When that happens, you are listening to your own heart or to the spirit of your own culture, not to God's voice in the Scripture. A great number of books advise "divine reading" of the Bible today, and define the activity uncarefully as reading "not for information but to hear a personal word of God to you." This presents a false contrast. It is certainly true that meditation personalizes the Word, but before we can meditate on what the text personally means to us and our time, we must first need to know as much as possible what the author meant to say to his readers when he wrote it. — Timothy Keller

A border collie named Orson inspired me to buy a 110-acre farm with four barns and a sheep. That led to a series of books about Bedlam Farm and about dogs, rural life, lambing and herding sheep. — Jon Katz

But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them. — Harrison Scott Key

Get Inspired: I'm continually inspired by Stuart Brown's work on play and Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind.4 If you want to learn more about the importance of play and rest, read these books. — Brene Brown

Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises. — Beverly Cleary

What I will say is that you have to exercise your writing muscle. Write every day. Get better at it. Read a lot of good books. As a professional writer, I force myself to write when I don't feel like it. I don't wait to feel inspired. It takes discipline and grit and sacrifice to be able to bring a book out to the world. It's so much work, and it's very difficult, but it is also the most fun I've ever had. I love making things up. I love amusing myself. — Melissa De La Cruz

The word "canon" is derived from a Hebrew word signifying "reed" (qaneh) and by extension "measuring stick." It enters into the Greek language as "canon" (kanon) with a wider semantic range signifying exemplary standards in relation to literary works, grammatical rules, and even certain human beings. The word was coined in the early church to indicate an absolutely authoritative, complete list of God-inspired books, which was the standard of truth (Athanasius, 39th Festal Letter). Although such a list was considered closed, it is clear that the creation of the canon did not happen in an instant. It had a long and complex history before such closure occurred. The historian Josephus (AD 95) describes a closed list of inspired books that had been authoritative for all Jews for centuries (Against Apion 8). — J. Daniel Hays

I'm a bit of a book worm, so a lot of the songs I write are inspired by books. — Brooke Fraser

Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel. — Colson Whitehead

Squatting upon the floor of the room, without any perceptible effort he passed into the hollow of his hand the contents of the rectum ... ," wrote the anonymous writer's physician in a letter printed in one of Fletcher's books. "The excreta were in the form of nearly round balls," and left no stain on the hand. "There was no more odour to it than there is to a hot biscuit." So impressive, so clean, was the man's residue that his physician was inspired to set it aside as a model to aspire to. Fletcher adds in a footnote that "similar [dried] specimens have been kept for five years without change," hopefully at a safe distance from the biscuits. — Mary Roach

It's funny that I got to do 'On the Road' because the thing that had the biggest impact on me growing up was reading books. I was very inspired by the book and this spirit of Dean Moriarty and how envious we all are of somebody who can be that carefree. — Garrett Hedlund

Magical, yes, but THE SNOW CHILD is also satisfyingly realistic in its depiction of 1920s homestead-era Alaska and the people who settled there, including an older couple bound together by resilient love. Eowyn Ivey's poignant debut novel grabbed me from the very first pages and made me wish we had more genre-defying Alaska novels like this one. Inspired by a fairy tale, it nonetheless contains more depth and truth than so many books set in this land of extremes. — Andromeda Romano-Lax

No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way are revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain, I would be helpless. Only alone can I draw close enough to God to discover His secrets. — George Washington Carver

No one pretends that Shakespeare was (divinely) inspired, and yet all the writers of the books of the Old Testament put together, could not have produced Hamlet. — Robert G. Ingersoll

I'm also very hopeful to continue my literary journey into the realm of children's books. To be able to read my kids a children's book that was inspired by them would be everything! — Trista Sutter

I wasn't inspired so much by a person as by reading many good books. I loved to write and I wondered if I might be able to write material that others would enjoy reading. — Peg Kehret

The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel. — Patti Smith

[T]he incomparable Diana Wynne Jones, one of the finest mythic fiction writers of our age, who left us too early (due to cancer) two days ago. I'm so grateful to her for the extraordinary books she has left behind, which have inspired a whole generation of younger writers. She was writing brilliant YA fantasy before the genre (as we know it now) even existed; she was writing enchanting "wizard school" books long before Harry Potter was a gleam in Rowling's eye; and her knowledge of how to weave mythic/folkloric themes into contemporary fiction was second to no one's. Diana will be terribly missed, but through her magical stories, her light will stay on. — Terri Windling

In August of 1998, I completed Seize the Night, the sequel to my novel Fear Nothing, one of many of my books in which a dog is among the cast of principal characters. Every time I wrote a story that included a canine, my yearning for a dog grew. Readers and critics alike said I had an uncanny knack for writing convincingly about dogs and even for writing from a dog's point of view. When a story contained a canine character, I always felt especially inspired, as if some angel watching over me was trying to tell me that dogs were a fundamental part of my destiny if only I would listen. — Dean Koontz

As an author, I want to write what I'm inspired to write. Not what my readers want me to write. I feel like the books will ultimately be better if my heart is fully into what I'm writing. — Colleen Hoover

I'm inspired by many different things. Often, I'm inspired by experiences I've had, books I've read, people I've met, stories I've heard. — Joseph Bruchac

I was inspired to write Countdown 'til Daddy Comes Home when I searched for books to help my 4 year daughter cope with her father deploying to Afghanistan and found nothing that quite fit our situation. My book is not only a great story for kids it has real suggestions for parents on how to keep you family connected during deployments or frequent business travel. — Kristin Ayyar

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names. — Marcus Tullius Cicero