Quotes & Sayings About The Muse

I curled my lip at the sight of sizzling human hair and skin clinging to my demon flesh. Damn, I'd have given anything to be back in Boston, sipping chai tea latte." ~ Muse, Ties That Bind, #5 The Veil Series. — Pippa DaCosta

Almighty Freedom! give my venturous song
The force, the charm that to thy voice belong;
Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way,
To nerve my country with the patriot lay,
To teach all men where all their interest lies,
How rulers may be just and nations wise:
Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee,
Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee. — Joel Barlow

Wanderess, Wanderess,
weave us a story of seduction and ruse.
Heroic be the Wanderess,
the world be her muse. — Roman Payne

Musicians and composers have become more adept than ever before to take influence from the figures that they have become devoted to. To them, they are their muses. They are willing to listen to them and to take heed of them when they are looking to be more creative. Today the gender limitations that came with muses have been eliminated and eschewed in favor of an open forum for creativity in today's culture. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

Similarly the call to growth can be conceptualized as personal (a daimon or genius, an angel or a muse) or as impersonal, like the tides or the transiting of Venus. Either way works, as long as we're comfortable with it. Or if extra-dimensionality doesn't sit well with you in any form, think of it as "talent," programmed into our genes by evolution. The point, for the thesis I'm seeking to put forward, is that there are forces we can call our allies. As Resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels. — Steven Pressfield

when i write of you, my dear
i am holding you
in the most
exquisite
ways. — Sanober Khan

Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse. — Cassandra Wilson

Flora was in that state where the spirit may be willing but the flesh is weak and wishes to go on holiday - and where the flesh in most cases wins hands down with a packed suitcase. It did so now. So she did what many a researcher both great and insignificant does when they are stuck. She yawned while contemplating how to catch the Muse by surprising Her. Almost invariably, the Muse has seen it all before - and also yawns. — Mavis Cheek

Every woman I have known has actually deepened my spiritual awareness. Even if I have been a selfish man and treated them badly ... There were two women, I won't name them, who had a powerful religious effect on me. The ancient idea of a muse is there. — John Tavener

I love getting older," I muse as I carefully begin to peel the layers away. "You're closer to death, but there are presents. — Abby McDonald

Oh to let go of it all ... The pain, the anguish, the shame and disgust ... Just let it all go. Embrace chaos. — Pippa DaCosta

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. — Henry David Thoreau

When two souls compose a single song, The muse fans Livid wrath before long. — Euripides

File under "Hard Truths": the creative muse is fiction. If you sit around waiting for the right moment to create, you will die waiting. — Antony Johnston

This where you bring all your girls before you bury them in the woods? — Pippa DaCosta

Sing, Muse, of high, molded ceilings and built-in bookcases chockablock with hardcovers! Sing of armchairs with scarlet upholstery and highboys lacquered like mirrors and the elegant shadows of potted palms! Sing of a chandelier made entirely of antlers! Of what looked to be a genuine Matisse on the wall above the hearth! — Garth Risk Hallberg

The Bane
... where coxswain's dirt
and seaman's shirts
brushed bawdily upon her chest ... — Muse

Moon is a shining ball,
from the window on my wall.

Moon is blemish-laden,
from the terrace of my mansion.

Moon is a cold flame,
from the porthole of my airplane.

Yet I have heard,
Moon is muse to philosophy brothers,
Moon is nurse to romantic lovers.
How can it be so various?

Are we not the same?
Or did the Moon really change? — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Now as always - humility and terror. Fear that the working of my pen cannot capture the grinding of my brain. It is so easy to understand why the ancients prayed for the help of a Muse. And the Muse came and stood beside them, and we, heaven help us, do not believe in Muses. We have nothing to fall back on but our craftsmanship and it, as modern literature attests, is inadequate. May I be honest; may I be decent; may I be unaffected by the technique of hucksters. If invocation is required, let this be my invocation - may I be strong and yet gentle, tender and yet wise, wise and yet tolerant. May I for a little while, only for a little while, see with the inflamed eyes of a God. — John Steinbeck

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

The hours spent forming a written work can make one obsessive, distracted, compulsive, and neurotic even, especially when it comes to those rare, precious occasions of streaming pure inspiration. To have a muse moment interrupted - to watch her scuttle back into hiding with unshared insight remaining on the tip of her tongue - is a wicked irritation. When a writer's eyes glaze over, when she stares off at nothing or appears to be memorizing the lines on a blank page, when she falls asleep at the desk ... tiptoe softly. For a writer's greatest desire is to receive inspiration; her greatest nightmare, to have tossed to the wind what could've been captured in words. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Dan Reynolds isn't ashamed to admit he hears 'things' others cannot. It has haunted his every walking moment for years. He doesn't like to talk about it much, but the voices in his head have become his constant companion. And when his inner muse speaks, Reynolds is quick to take notes. — David Dunn

Nothingness
... there in this place
where nothingness takes
but for the glimmer
a steadfast shimmer
all would be consumed ... — Muse

Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first. — Dar Williams

I can assure you, as anyone who has ever met a muse knows, the best way to get a muse to hang around is to show you could be having fun without her. — Z.A. Maxfield

I consider the name. It wasn't on the list, but as I study the baby's flawless features, I can't deny it fits. My muse led me into this world in the first place, then gave me the power to rule it; Jeb's muse repainted Wonderland so many years ago, then stayed here to bring peace between two realms. Even though Morpheus would never admit it aloud, this is his way of honoring Jeb's contribution, my other side, and human flights of fancy. The sentiment affects me deeply, warms me all the way from my wing tips to my toes, and I'm grateful beyond words. But — A.G. Howard

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

Remember a feeling of excitement, of sudden inspiration, when I was visiting Giovanni Boccaccio's home in the walled village of Certaldo, outside of Florence. (Boccaccio was the medieval author of The Decameron.) It was as though I had met my muse! After this trip, I read The Decameron and began writing the Alchemy Series in earnest. — Mary Pope Osborne

You can wait forever for the muse to sit on your shoulder, but most of the time you know what has to be done and inspiration is not going to help you. — Nick Hornby

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

Next time I'm taking down hellhounds for you, I'll remember to tone down the pretty. — Pippa DaCosta

Clio may be the most austere and chaste of the Muses, but she has been known to come down informally from Mount Helicon in a mood so raffish that there are those who claim to have seen her with her slip showing. — Thornton Willis

Lately the muse has been treating me like Ike treated Tina. — Quentin R. Bufogle

But if you cross me again Akil, so-help-me, I'll find a way to kill you this time."
His eyes lit up at the prospect, as though he'd accepted a challenge I didn't even know I'd laid down. "I'd expect nothing less."
Demons; only they can get a cheap thrill from a death threat. — Pippa DaCosta

Every writer should know their target. Aim for the heart ~ hit that and all which follows is sheer ecstasy. — Muse

The children are in love but do not know with what. They talk in gibberish, muse themselves into an indefinable pallor, and when they are completely at a loss they invent a language that maddens them. My fish. My hook. My fox. My snare. My fire. You my water. You my current. My earth. You my if. And you my but. Either. Or. My everything ... my everything ... They push one another, go for each other with their fists and scuffle over a counter-word that doesn't exist. — Ingeborg Bachmann

That's what writers and artists and creators do, boy. Listen to the Void and try to hear dead folks' thoughts. Feel their pain. The pain of living folks too. Finding a muse is just an artist or holy man's way of getting a foot in the Void Which Binds' front door. Aenea knew that. You should have too. — Dan Simmons

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

Logic is the subject that has helped me most in picking stocks, if only because it taught me to identify the peculiar illogic of Wall Street. Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out just by sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company. — Peter Lynch

He felt that if he had a love he would have hung her picture just facing the tub so that, lost in the soothing steamings of the hot water, he might lie and look up at her and muse warmly and sensuously on her beauty. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Writing for the love of writing. My muse makes no apologies under this pen name. ;) — Amanda Wylde

I found no muse on Hyperion during those first years. For many, the expansion of distance because of limited transportation - EMVs were unreliable, skimmers scarce - and the contraction of artificial consciousness due to absence of datasphere, no access to the All Thing, and only one fatline transmitter - all led to a renewal of creative energies, a new realization of what it meant to be human and an artist. Or so I heard. No muse appeared. My verse continued to be technically proficient and dead as Huck Finn's cat. I decided to kill myself. — Dan Simmons

Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. — Homer

A Bluesman hates to be told what to do. Authority rankles him, inspires his rebellion, and plays to his need to self-destruct. A Bluesman doesn't take to having a boss unless he's on a chain gang (for the chain gang boss ranks below only a mean old woman and a sweet young thing in the hierarchy of the Blues Muse, followed closely by bad liquor, a dead dog, and the Man). — Christopher Moore

Obey the muse, Liz said. She's a fickle mistress. — Gayle Forman

Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. — Plato

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

Sometimes there is no right thing. Sometimes wrong wins, and that's okay. Life doesn't have cooker-cutters for right and wrong, Ryder. There's that messy gray area in between, and I sure hope I'm not the one staring down the barrel of your gun when you figure that out." Muse ~ Darkest Before Dawn. #3 The Veil Series — Pippa DaCosta

I honor health as the first Muse. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I try to, at least once or twice a week, have someone over and model, usually a dancer friend or a poet or someone to come over and just stay still for me. Depending on how exhibitionist they are, it will determine the finished work. And I say, "You're the muse; you come up with it. I'll draw you however you want." — Eric Drooker

Yes. I guess it's the foolish romantic in me, but you see, I don't think that sex is my Muse. — Peter Murphy

That awesome moment when I'm in my zone. Comp on, internet off, WhatsApp muted, Word doc open, muse connected, fingers racing, time flying. Stomach groans with hunger but I can't drag myself away from the keyboard. By the time I take a break, I look back and I'm like, "Hell, yeah! — Tom Jalio

The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs. — Plato

Chains
chains that hold me to the ground
chains that keep me solidly bound
chains that tether my heart to you
chains that only one truth ... — Muse

I do not know whether I would not like much better to have produced one perfectly formed child by intercourse with the muses than by intercourse with my wife. — Michel De Montaigne

And you will suck the life out of me
Bury it
I won't let you bury it
I won't let you smother it
I won't let you murder it
And our time is running out
And our time is running out
You can't push it underground
You can't stop it screaming out
How did it come to this? — Matthew Bellamy

You're best when you're not in charge. The ego locks the muse. — Robin Williams

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

She wanted to be someone's muse - to be worshipped and adored, body and soul. She wanted to play Beatrice to a dashing and noble Dante and to inhabit Paradise with him forever. And to live a life that would rival the beauty of Botticelli's illustrations. — Sylvain Reynard

The most important thing is insight, that is to be - curious - to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. — William Faulkner

Alone with the Morlocks, thought Silenus. But not even Morlocks for company in the end. Only my muse. There — Dan Simmons

Being human was a lot more difficult than it looked. Demon was easy. Demon was simple. Human was ... terrifying. Muse — Pippa DaCosta

It's something I worry about when I'm working out. I don't want to get too fit. Because I don't want the new DaVinci of this Millennium to say, "You. I have found my muse. I have to sculpt you." — Jimmy Fallon

Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
We are but mortals, and must sing of men. — Theocritus

Speaking Akil's name around Stefan felt like throwing gasoline on a bushfire." ~ Muse — Pippa DaCosta

Agony's Plot
A zephyr skimmed
across my creamy skin
gently kissing
where the sun had been ... — Muse

When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose. This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don't. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. — Steven Pressfield

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

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

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

The 'Muse' is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake. — Roman Payne

The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings. — Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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

Out of the red and silver and the long cry of alarm to the poet who survives in all human beings, as the child survives in him; to this poet she threw an unexpected ladder in the middle of the city and ordained, 'Climb! — Anais Nin

I'd really like having a couple days of being a rock star, although I'd rather be a backup - like maybe the drummer for Muse ... It would also be fun to be gorgeous, like be Charlize Theron, just for a couple of days. — Stephenie Meyer

I worship at the temple of your body and without you, I'd have no art ... — John Geddes

You're the half-sister of the full-blood demon, Valenti. The illegitimate child of Asmodeus - one of the Seven Princes of Hell. You were sold at birth as a plaything for lesser demons."
"A half-blood abomination," he snarled. "An embarrassment to demons everywhere. By all rights, you should be dead. — Pippa DaCosta

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.

Pity! Religion has so seldom found
A skilful guide into poetic ground!
The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray
And every muse attend her in her way. — William Cowper

Sixteen years as a freelance features journalist taught me that neither the absence of 'the Muse' nor the presence of 'the block' should be allowed to hinder the orderly progress of a book. — Jim Crace

Instead of discussing with myself every morning whether I feel inspired or not, I step into my office every day at nine sharp, open the window and politely ask the muse to enter and kiss me. Sometimes she comes in, more often she does not. But she can never claim that she hasn't found me waiting in the right place. — Peter Prange

Writer's Resolution
Enough's Enough! No more shall I
Pursue the Muse and scorch the pie
Or dream of Authoring a book
When I (unhappy soul) must cook;
Or burn the steak while I wool-gather,
And stir my spouse into a lather
Invoking words like "Darn!" and such
And others that are worse (Oh, much!)
Concerning culinary knack
Which I (HE says) completely lack.
I'll keep my mind upon my work;
I'll learn each boresome cooking quirk;
This day shall mark a new leaf's turning...
That smell! Oh Hell! The beans are burning! — Terry Ryan

You are the rainbow that adds color to my gray skies. — Avijeet Das

Now the birds & trees & the moroccan kitties are my muse. — Craig Thompson

At the mention of her name, my heart started beating faster. Dawn. Rusty. My muse. — Karina Halle

Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You're not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest. — Shannon L. Alder

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

I'm not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work. — Ray Bradbury

First, I spit out a mouthful of dirt. Then, I screamed at the sky. "That's it! I've had it! Everything is trying to kill me! All I did was make one stupid wish. Aladdin made three. I'm the hero of this story, so where's my happy ending, already? It's not fair."

Rexi bent over, trying to catch her breath. "You know what's not fair? Spending Muse Day as a toad just because the kitchen ran out of frog legs. Or being volunteered for this little journey. So build a bridge, then make like a billy goat and get over it already because no one is listening. — Betsy Schow

Sing, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he saved not his comrades, though he desired it sore, for through their own blind folly they perished - fools, who devoured the kine of Helios Hyperion; but he took from them the day of their returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us. — Homer

To Lou: I want to see the world through you; for then I shall not be seeing the world but only you, you you! I have never seen you without thinking that I should like to pray to you. I have never heard you without thinking that I should like to believe in you. I have never longed for you without thinking that I should like to suffer for you. I have never desired you without thinking that I should be allowed to kneel before you. — Rainer Maria Rilke

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

I've found that depending on the amount of the check, disciplined inspiration can be called upon willingly. I think the name of the lesser known tenth muse was Dollar Dollar Bill Y'all. — Kevin Keck

I've long considered becoming a writer to be the death of nightmares. For me at least, since I started writing I hadn't had any. Something really terrible or awful happens in a dream and you wake up and think, awesome, and reach for a pen and paper. — Logan Kain

For hundreds of years people have talked about artists having inspiration, but often, some persons would say, write us a symphony or write us a song, on commission. The artists would come up with a masterpiece without waiting to have their muse inspire them. — Tom Glazer

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm. — Barbara Kingsolver

Don't keep your Muse locked up in the closet. Set them free to dance across the page and what they create will be a masterpiece. — Michelle C. Hillstrom

And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us. — Charles Bukowski

Good old-fashioned, puritanical work guilt is, for me, a better colleague than any Muse. If I reach my weekly word target by Friday afternoon, then the weekend is guilt-free. — Jim Crace

It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel. — William Butler Yeats