Inspired Thought Quotes & Sayings

Think only of what you desire, and expect only what you desire, even when the very contrary seems to be coming into your life. Make it a point to have definite results in mind at all times. Permit no thinking to be aimless. Every aimless thought is time and energy wasted, while every thought that is inspired with a definite aim will help to realize that aim, and if all your thoughts are inspired with a definite aim, the whole power of your mind will be for you and will work with you in realizing what you have in view. That you should succeed is therefore assured, because there is enough power in your mind to realize your ambitions, provided all of that power is used in working for your ambitions. — Christian D. Larson

Office reformers are pulled in two directions. They either follow Frederick Taylor (the father of scientific management) and the successive waves of management scientists who thought that with enough overhead cameras, spreadsheets, computing power, and analysis, they could "solve" the organization and its problems. Or they follow the dreamers of the 1970s and '80s, who, inspired by the cybernetic-counterculture movement, thought that by getting rid of that same organizational infrastructure, they could free workers to reach their full potential by embracing chaos, complexity, new technology, or all three. — Ray Fisman

You guys know about vampires? ... You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There's this idea that monsters don't have reflections in a mirror. And what I've always thought isn't that monsters don't have reflections in a mirror. It's that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn't see myself reflected at all. I was like, "Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don't exist?" And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it. — Junot Diaz

I think when I was getting into directing, or wanting to be a director, when I was a teenager, the two films that really inspired me were Raising Arizona and Evil Dead II. And in the case of the former, I thought, "Wow. Why don't all comedies look like this?" And then as I started doing comedy, particularly when I started doing it on TV. — Edgar Wright

The lights shifted into and out of his field of view. He wondered if that was what it would be like to look at stars. He'd never looked up at a sky. The thought inspired a certain vertigo. A sense of terror of the infinite that was almost pleasant. There — James S.A. Corey

Since I was 4, Julia Roberts has inspired me. I thought if I liked her enough, I'd become as pretty as her. That didn't happen, but I was obsessed and watched her movies over and over. — Martha MacIsaac

The living WORD, medicine for the soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It was the downfall of love, Lamia thought wistfully, that it inspired the lover to toss away any shred of caution just to obtain the pure, desperate pleasure of talking about the beloved. — Shamim Sarif

He wanted to tell her that he was inspired and vigilant and recklessly alone, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe: porous and spiky, shifting with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickerings of white and green and pale gold; something that loved stars because it was made of the same substance. — Michael Cunningham

I was staying with my sister and messing around with the guitar every day for my own amusement. Then she took me around and introduced me to Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Little Walter, and the first time I saw that onstage, it inspired me to play. I thought that was the world. — Otis Rush

Success and achievement come from your belief in yourself. You can see and be inspired by my belief when doctors said I'd never do XYZ. Discover Nobody-thought-i-could-do-it-but-i-showed-them-and-so-can-you-amy-rankin/1114910767?ean=2940016304205 — Amy Rankin

I never let the thought of failure enter my mind. My knowledge of my unity with the Universal One and the fact that I must do this thing, and the inspired belief I should do it as a demonstration of my belief in man's unlimited power, made me ignore the difficulties that lay in the way. — Walter Russell

He took one look at my macabre makeup job, and his jaw dropped. "Goddamn, you are hideous. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse." His reaction brought me a twisted sense of joy. Having him call me a zombie when we were locked up together had definitely inspired my look. — Trina M. Lee

The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are responses to a disease thought to be intractable and capricious
that is, a disease not understood
in an era in which medicine's central premise is that all diseases can be cured. — Susan Sontag

When you have inspired thought, you have to trust it and you have to act on it. — Jack Canfield

A lot of producers get famous because they decide to be superstars for their own reasons, but I'm inspired by Timbaland and Pharrell and Swizz Beatz 'cause they're doing things that are so different. I like how they're introducing ideas I never would have thought of. — Diplo

I never thought I'd ever leave Zerc. But after knowing Cricket, it occurred to me that I had no reason to stay. I had no family, no friends aside from her. I never even spoke to Enkai until she brought us together. It was she who first inspired me to dream of actually seeing those worlds I spent my every waking moment reading about. Her and her wild heart, her laughing spirit, so bright in her eyes whenever she spoke of her travels and all the wondrous places she had seen. When I was a boy, I envied her for her adventures. When I became a man, I only pitied her. — Ash Gray

New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment. — Max Planck

I thought of a lot of people from the same era when I was making a lot of records that had continued making a lot of records. A lot of it didn't seem terribly inspired. — Robbie Robertson

Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Even sporting a frown, his upper lip was full with a pronounced 'Cupid's bow' that inspired the image of her nibbling his tender flesh to manifest in her mind. At the thought, her cheeks heated with a blush she knew he saw by the smirk that lifted the corner of his mouth.

"What are ya thinkin' about?" He winked, adding insult to injury where her pride was concerned.

Taking a step back and turning on her heel, Abigail growled, "I was thinking you have the manners of a stable boy but are dressed like knight. — Julia Mills

I thought, well of course, Kinsey absolutely adored teaching. He was a wonderful teacher. So these kids really inspired me. So that was a clue I hung onto. He loved young people, he absolutely loved them. And he loved teaching them and trying to help them. — Liam Neeson

and thought to tart it up with a few Shakespeare quotations, having a vague recollection from my undergraduate days that the Bard was fond of joking about the great pox. I dusted off my battered copy of the Riverside Shakespeare and started leafing through it. Holy crap, I thought, there is a lot of stuff here on syphilis. My curiosity was piqued, and I did some more digging. Was there a connection between Shakespeare's syphilitic obsession, contemporary gossip about his sexual misadventures, and the only medical fact known about him with certainty - that his handwriting became tremulous in late middle age? I wrote an article that appeared in Clinical Infectious Diseases, supposing it to be of scant interest beyond its immediate specialty audience. To my surprise, it generated a fair amount of Internet buzz, and inspired a segment on The Daily Show. I began to think that there might be interest in a book on the topic of writers and disease, written from a medical perspective. — John J. Ross

There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The highest praise we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or feeling with which he has inspired us. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I thought I would be more inspired to have all these new feelings to talk about, but I really just want to hang out with my daughter. — Jay-Z

I thought maybe if she could express herself rather than suffer herself, if she had a way to relieve the burden, she lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own, she helped out at the store, then came home and sat in her big chair and stared at her magazines, not at them but through them, she let the dust accumulate on her shoulders. — Jonathan Safran Foer

When they throw the water on the witch, she says, "Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness". That line inspired my life. I sometimes say it to myself before I go to sleep, like a prayer. — John Waters

Sometimes I would write while inspired and sometimes I would write through sheer force of will, and in revision the writing that I thought was "dead" very frequently turned out to be better because it was more free of ego. — Jesse Michaels

I sort of do what I say and say what I do which I'm happy with because it makes my life real easy. When I was younger, people would say that I was inspired by David Lynch, so I went and watched his stuff and I was surprised. I thought it was smart, with what I was trying to do lyrically. So I started watching some of his stuff. I've never seen his movies in [their] entirety, I'm more interested in him as a person and how he came to be successful taking an alternative route, sort of a subculture icon. — Lana Del Rey

Thirdly, the existent individual is impassioned, impassioned with a passionate thought; he is inspired; he is a kind of incarnation of the infinite in the finite. This passion which animates the existent (and this brings us to the fourth characteristic) is what Kierkegaard calls the passion of freedom. — Jean-Paul Sartre

You might get an inspired thought or idea to help you move towards what you want faster. — Rhonda Byrne

I gaze out of the window at the lanes of red taillights streaming towards the hills, the city laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, the view confirming that I was much more alone than I thought, and all those red lights inspired nothing more than a sense that I, too, should be fleeing somewhere. — Chloe Thurlow

Vivien Leigh was a phenomenal actress, a very complicated woman, living on the edge of mental problems, haunted by demons and angels. And though I've never thought of myself like Marilyn Monroe, I was inspired by the tremendous risk she took - of being vulnerable. — Rebecca De Mornay

I feel like everything is inspired by something else. There is no 100 percent original thought. — Ne-Yo

Everybody gets inspired by different things. I grew up wanting to go up the street with a video camera because I liked watching David Letterman yell out of the ninth floor of Rockefeller Center with a megaphone at people on the street. I thought that was a riot. — Tom Green

To live always in the Secret Places of the Most High, To think only those thoughts that are inspired from above, To do all things in the conviction that God is with us, To give the best to all the world with no thought of reward, To leave all recompense to Him who doeth all things well, To love everybody as God loves us, and be Kind as He is Kind, To ask God for everything and in faith expect everything, To live in perpetual gratitude to Him who gives everything, To love God so much that we can inwardly feel that My Father and I are one, This is the prayer without ceasing, the true worship of the soul. — Christian D. Larson

It was only when I went to acting school that I was like, "You are absolutely such a pigheaded freak show that you thought you, at the age of 12 or 13, could have a better understanding of Stanislavski. Why did you think that you didn't need to go to school?" It was quite funny. But, I was certainly inspired. — Giles Matthey

Philo of Larisa, head of the Academy in Athens ... inspired Cicero with a passion for philosophy, and in particular for the theories of Skepticism, which asserted that knowledge of the nature of things is in the nature of things unattainable. Such ideas were well judged to appeal to a student of rhetoric who had learned to argue all sides of a case. In his early twenties Cicero wrote the first two volumes of a work on 'inventin'
that is to say, the technique of finding ideas and arguments for a speech; in it he noted that the most important thing was 'that we do not recklessly and presumptuously assume something to be true.' This resolute uncertainty was to be a permanent feature of his thought. — Anthony Everitt

I even get inspired by movies that aren't very good, because there's always something good in movies that are collectively thought of as a failure. There's good in everything, I find. — Steven Spielberg

What I believe in touches many aspects of religious and spiritual thought. Mainly I'm influenced and inspired by the eastern yogi's aspect of mysticism, Which is, I think, the future. — Dave Davies

Embrace every good opportunity you encounter; some will get you informed; others will get you inspired ... Some will get you involved and others you make you improved! — Israelmore Ayivor

I hope your dreams have come or will come true. Or you feel inspired to down tools on what you wrongly thought was making you happy and follow the real dream. — Miranda Hart

When alchemists first learned how to distill spirits, they called it aqua vitae, the water of life, and far from considering it the work of the devil, they thought the discovery was divinely inspired. — Gene Logsdon

Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it. — Charles Dickens

Be inspired; you have seen another day! Smile; you have another chance! Take a step; you can do it again! Move; you can't continue like this! Do something for that is all life is about! Impact makers take steps. Impact makers face challenges. Impact makers overcome challenges. Each day is a new day to have a different view of the real purpose why we live. Each day is another chance to add take a step towards a great end. Each day is another day to choose courage or fear! Each day is another moment of time to dare tactically or to do anything! When you wake up, do something! Make each day count! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

One guy that really inspired me was Michael Jordan. I wouldn't say that he inspired me as a sportsman, but I love going back and watching videos of him, especially how he conducts himself in interviews. He always seemed to be very careful about the words that he used and thought about everything differently to anybody else. — Matteo Manassero

We can block our blessings with one thought, one decision. Sometimes your blessing may require certain actions on your behalf. You asked for the job? Now, you must get dressed and go to the interview and prove yourself worthy of the position. When you move, you activate your faith. And, suddenly everything falls into place. Faith without works is dead. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

I have Marvin Gaye's driver's license. His wife sent it to me, because she really loved my 'Happy People' record. She said that she thought it represented the sprit of her husband. The license is from California. I get inspired every time I look at it. — R. Kelly

I'm inspired by being in a different town every day - all the people I meet, all the things I see. There's no way of compartmentalizing everything in my head; whatever I'm taking in is coming out in some way. I think I love painting so much because, for me, it's so fast. There's not too much thought in these paintings. — Alison Mosshart

And if you have art, then, as I was saying, in falsifying your promise that you would exhibit Homer, you are not dealing fairly with me. But if, as I believe, you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer unconsciously under his inspiring influence, then I acquit you of dishonesty, and shall only say that you are inspired. Which do you prefer to be thought, dishonest or inspired? ION: — Plato

Hope is certainty. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When you have an inspired thought, you must trust it and act on it. — Rhonda Byrne

With their profound thoughts and ideas, which they seek everywhere and project into everything, they make life harder for themselves than they should. Oh, that at long last you had the courage for once to yield yourselves to your impressions, to let yourselves be delighted, let yourselves be moved, let yourselves be elevated, yes, to let yourselves be taught and inspired and encouraged for something great; only do not always think that everything is vain if it is not some abstract thought or idea! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali is the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them
or worse, who credibly rebut them
they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful. — Steven Pinker

The character, therefore, will depend upon the thoughts. I am what I think. I am what I think even more than what I do, for it is the thought that interprets the action. An act in itself good may become even bad by the thought that inspired it. — Basil W. Maturin

I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired. — Richard Wagner

The only thing that really inspired me for singing was the movie and musical 'Phantom of the Opera.' I went to see it in the theaters, and I loved it so much. And when I got home, I started singing the songs around the house, and my mom thought I was really good, so she asked me if I wanted to do a talent competition. And I said, 'Yes, definitely.' — Jackie Evancho

And Archimedes, as he was washing, thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero's crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool. He leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, "I have found it! Eureka!". — Plutarch

I am very much inspired by the great masters of entertainment: Bob Hope, George Burns, Jimmy Durante - who never thought about retiring. When people ask me if I plan to retire, I say, "Retire to what? I am doing what I love best right now!" — Tony Bennett

Minds think with ideas, not information No amount of data, bandwidth, or processing power can substitute for inspired thought. — Clifford Stoll

Research states that we have a two-week window to act after being inspired by an experience, before the brain is compelled to move on. I have always thought [that while some] documentaries I have seen have educated me, [they] have failed to engage and drive me to act in support of the message. — Sam Branson

A vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide. — Bret Easton Ellis

There are not many secure hospitals that can boast someone who thought he was Napoleon, but St. Cerebellum's could field three - not to mention a handful of serial killers whose names inexplicably yet conveniently rhymed with their crimes. Notorious cannibal "Peter the Eater" was incarcerated here, as were "Sasha the Slasher" and "Mr. Browner the Serial Drowner." But the undisputed king of rhyme-inspired serial murder was Isle of Man resident Maximilian Marx, who went under the uniquely tongue-twisting epithet "Mad Max Marx, the Masked Manxman Axman." Deirdre Blott tried to top Max's clear superiority by changing her name so as to become "Nutty Nora Newsome, the Knife-Wielding Weird Widow from Waddersdon," but no one was impressed, and she was ostracized by the other patients for being such a terrible show-off. — Jasper Fforde

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day. — Alex Noble

Negative thought saps a person's strength.
Positive thought is healthy to the soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Do you understand, mortal?" Eanrin said. "We Faerie know it's the spirit that counts, and all else is malleable. Beauty or ugliness; brawn or frailty; height or lack thereof
these appearances can be exchanged with scarcely a thought! But the truth ... now, that's another issue. The truth of the thing, the person behind what you perceive with any of your paltry five senses ... Creature of dust, it's the truth that counts! And you'll rarely find more truth than in Faerie tales."
With those words, the golden man dwindled into the golden cat, and try as he might, the Chronicler could perceive him as nothing else. But he was still Eanrin, and he smiled, pleased with himself.
"That wasn't a half-bad monologue. Do you find yourself inspired to new heights of ambition? — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

How one views Scripture will determine the rest of one's theology. There is no more basic issue: Every system of thought that takes seriously the claims of the Bible to be the inspired, authoritative Word of God will share a commitment to particular central truths, and that without compromise. Those systems that do not begin with this belief in Scripture will exhibit a wide range of beliefs that will shift over time in light of the ever-changing whims and views of culture. Almost every single collapse involving denominations and churches in regard to historic Christian beliefs can be traced back to a degradation in that group's view of the Bible as the inspired and inerrant revelation of God's truth. Once this foundation is lost, the house that was built upon it cannot long stand — James R. White

No domestic dispute between Franny and David had inspired the removal of their wedding rings. She would take hers off at work when she was giving scalp massages. Once she thought she had lost the ring, but she found it in the treatment room on a candleholder David had made for her during a personal failure of a pottery class he had taken the year he lost his job. After she found her ring, she started leaving it at home. — Amelia Gray

The name Crow was inspired by a number of things. I thought it would be cool to have a robot with sort of a Native American feel to it. — Joel Hodgson

I want people to be inspired that I've always strived for excellence and I've always gone beyond what anybody ever thought I could do, what I thought I myself could do. And I've allowed myself to be inspired, kept my eyes open and my senses open to inspiration around me. — Clara Hughes

You can develop positive mindset with reading of awe-inspired writings. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Going to the school to meet the visually impaired was special. I thought I was inspiring them. I was thinking what I could possibly say to inspire them. Instead of me inspiring them, I felt they inspired me. They showed me how much courage they have, and how hard these teachers are working for these children. They made me feel like I don't have any problems in life. It gave me uplift. They made me feel so great. — Yanni

Jane Jacobs work wouldnt have been complete if it hadn't inspired others to carry it on, and evolve Jane's groundbreaking accomplishments so that the essential kernel of thought remains relevant for future generations. The essayists in What We See have built on those essential footholds that people who have never heard of Jane Jacobs will benefit from for decades. — Majora Carter

The aftermath of the war is what inspired us to write many of our plays. The whole reason for our writing Inherit the Wind was that we were appalled at the blacklisting. We were appalled at thought control. — Jerome Lawrence

I was inspired by movies like 'Jawbreaker'and 'Carrie' for the 'Break the Rules' video. I never went to prom when I was at school so this was kind of me living out my weird fantasy of what prom would be like in my head. I asked Rose McGowan to be in the video and I never ever thought she would say yes, but she did ... so she came to prom too ... And she trashed it. ;) — Charli XCX

Before that I had largely thought of selling as just a way of making a living for myself. I had dreaded to go in to see people, for fear I was making a nuisance of myself. But now I was inspired! I resolved right then to dedicate the rest of my selling career to this principle: finding out what people want, and helping them get it. — Frank Bettger

Well, I believe that the depth of your struggle can determine the height of your success. I was inspired to come out of everything I've been through and end up in a place where I never thought that I would be. — R. Kelly

One evening I came home and there on the couch I found my husband, Tom, with a freshly fledged crow sitting calmly in his lap. They were busy watching Star Trek: The Next Generation; since Captain Jean-Luc Picard was in the middle of an absorbing monologue, they hardly registered my arrival, but finally they both glanced my way, Tom looking a bit sheepish, the crow nibbling bits from a can of gourmet cat food. I thought of something Bernd Heinrich wrote, inspired by his raven studies, "Living with another creature, you naturally feel closer to it the more activities that can be shared, especially important activities like watching TV. — Lyanda Lynn Haupt

It seems to have been meeting Methodist missionaries from India that inspired Margaret with her ambition, curious in someone little more than a child, to join the Indian Civil Service After listening to them, she remembered, 'I wanted to be an Indian civil servant, because I thought that India was a remarkable place and I would love to be a part, a cog in the wheel, of this great empire. (page 6) — Charles Moore

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it. — Hannah Arendt

To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. To accomplish this, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact, encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text. That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached. — Neil Postman

Meadowlark inspired me to play for a long time. I thought, 'If he could do it, I can do it.' The legacy that Meadowlark leaves is something that every child and adult can benefit from. — Robert Parish

I'm really inspired by the show 'Future Boy Conan' from the '70s. It's a really beautiful show, and I love shonen anime and shojo anime, and I like the thought of mixing them together. — Rebecca Sugar

Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage. — Carl Bernstein

Be inspired, raising the bar of excellence in your life every day. Act better than before; grow higher than usual; think faster than normal. — Israelmore Ayivor

You see, women have been essential to every great move of God. Yes, Moses led the Isaelites out of Egypt, but only after his mother risked her life to save him! Closer to our time, Clara Barton was instrumental in starting the Red Cross. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin put fire into people's heart to end slavery in the United States. Rosa Parks kicked the Civil Rights movement into gear with her quiet act of courage. Eunice Kennedy Shriver created the Special Olympics. Mother Teresa inspired the world by bringing love to countless thought unlovable. And millions of other women quietly change the world every day by bringing the love of God to those around them. — Stasi Eldredge

I owe my discovery of the Hot Club of Cowtown to Kinky Friedman, leader of the Texas Jewboys. When I saw that Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were headlining the 2003 Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival, I thought it my duty to check out the band that had inspired the Texas Jewboys. — Clive Sinclair

Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as well as suffering.
She looked at Gavin, supine, unconcerned, contented, and thought that perhaps there was something to being a sociopath. If you didn't have a heart, it couldn't be broken. — Nenia Campbell

'Ice Cold' is the eighth in my 'Rizzoli and Isles' thriller series. It was inspired by a true occurrence in the 1960s, now known as the 'Dugway Incident,' in which 6,000 sheep mysteriously died overnight in a remote area of Utah. I thought, 'What if it happened instead to people? What if the inhabitants of an entire village vanished overnight?' — Tess Gerritsen

To me, music and songwriting is ... part of the intriguing thing is the creative process; you know, the creative thought process. Relying on that ... there is some sort of inspiration there and you can't always put your finger on where it comes from. So, it's always been important for me to have my own thing and, even though I'm inspired by and influenced by many different musicians and styles of music, I was very determined early on to have my own thing. So when I sit down to write I don't necessarily have a particular narrative or message in mind. I'm interested in language and in words. — Page Hamilton

We let fear rule us and guide us, and that's never the way to win. Never. A long time ago a great man once said that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." That was never truer than during First Night. It was fear that caused people to panic and abandon defenses. It was fear that made them squabble instead of working together. It was fear that inspired them to take actions they would never have taken if they'd given it a minute's more cool thought. — Jonathan Maberry

The literary experience extends impression into discourse. It flowers to thought with nouns, verbs, objects. It thinks. Film implodes discourse, it deliterates thought, it shrinks it to the compacted meaning of the preverbal impression or intuition or understanding. You receive what you see, you don't have to think it out ... Fiction goes everywhere, inside, outside, it stops, it goes, its action can be mental. Nor is it time-driven. Film is time-driven, it never ruminates, it shows the outside of life, it shows behavior. It tends to the simplest moral reasoning. Films out of Hollywood are linear. The narrative simplification of complex morally consequential reality is always the drift of a film inspired by a book. Novels can do anything in the dark horrors of consciousness. Films do close-ups, car drive-ups, places, chases and explosions. — E.L. Doctorow

Let me tell you what I learned in the Hole. I learned that in suffering, we find the true measure of our strength. I learned that a man can be a coward one day and a hero the next. I learned that I'm not as good a man as I thought I was. But the most important thing is this: I learned that though it costs me dearly, I can change. I learned what has been broken can be made new. Do you know who taught me that? A prostitute. In a bitter woman who made her living in shame, I found honor, courage, and loyalty. She inspired me and she saved me. -Logan — Brent Weeks

No, it had never been like this for him before, with anyone. Of all the women he'd known, she was the only one he was compelled to be with, driven to touch. Beyond the physical, the basic and apparently unsatiable lust she inspired in him, was a constant fascination. Her mind, her heart, her secrets, her scars. He had told her once they were two lost souls. He thought now he'd spoken no more than the truth. But with each other, they'd found something that rooted them. For a man who had been wary of cops all of his life, it was staggering to know his happiness now depended on one. — J.D. Robb

The simultaneity of near and far confused me; I thought it possible to find the past, the present and the future united in one place, giving it all that life can hold; but I had grave doubts that at any given moment life might reign both here and there, on this side and that side of the seas and mountains. And such doubts, demanding resolution, may have inspired earliest journeys: I went forth, not to learn what fear was but to test what the names held and feel their magic in the flesh, just as, at the open window, you feel the miraculous power of the sun you'd long seen reflected on distant hills and spread on dewy meadows. — Annemarie Schwarzenbach

When I first turned elite in gymnastics, when I was 14, that's when I really became more inspired than ever. I just always kept that in the back of my mind, and always thought about making the 2012 team. — Aly Raisman

Action that is inspired from aligned thought is joyful action. Action that is offered from a place of contridicted thought is hard work that is not satisfying and does not yield good results. When you really feel like jumping into action, that is a clear sign that your vibration is pure and you are not offering contridicting thoughts to your own desire. When you are having a hard time making yourself do something, or when the action you offer does not produce the results you are seeking, it is always because you are offering thoughts in opposition to your desire. — Esther Hicks