Ayn Rand Quotes

An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the room had leaped into light.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

It was a real sort of synergistic 'Aha!' moment when I started acting.

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.

The day you catch an idea you fall in love with, even a small one, is a beautiful day.

When the mind grapples with a great and intricate problem, it makes its advances step by step, with but little realization of the gains it has made, until suddenly, with an effect of abrupt illumination, it realizes its victory.

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.

I believe a lot of our lives are spent asleep, and what I've been trying to do is hold on to those moments when a little spark cuts through the fog and nudges you.

Sometimes ideas feel like they were already there, and that you're just discovering them.

Every now and then, I strike something that just goes click, you know, in my head. As Gertrude Stein used to say, it rings the bell, and I feel, this is great.

All genius is a conquering of chaos and mystery.

Every now and again, something will pop into my head when I'm driving or I'm in the shower, you'll just get an image and it stays with you. It doesn't have to be much, it doesn't have to be a story, it could just be an image. But it won't leave your head and that's when you know you've got something.

All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.

The manner in which one single ray of light, one single precious hint, will clarify and energize the whole mental life of him who receives it, is among the most wonderful and heavenly of intellectual phenomena.

Lights get low and that's when I have my brightest ideas.

I think inspiration is always around; it's just a question of whether or not you're noticing it.

The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap

I always have my best thoughts on the toilet.

It's always a mystery to me, I have to confess. I've never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there's nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there.

I don't know anything about inspiration because I don't know what inspiration is; I've heard about it, but I never saw it.

That's how you write novels actually. You suddenly hit upon something and you realize this is the path you were meant to take. You'd be a fool if you didn't follow it. Perhaps it's like solving a difficult question in pure mathematics. There must be a moment when the solution is so simple and evident that you wonder why you hadn't come upon it before. When you do come upon it, you know it in the deepest part of your being. It carries its own logic.

Inspiration is that state in which mind and heart are connected. When you feel inspired you find yourself thrust into a world where ordinary objects and events are full of light, as if illuminated from within. This inner light is truth, and when you suddenly see the truth, we gain insight, clarity, and joy.

The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.

If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the barroom and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed.