Ned Rorem Quotes

I don't expect to find inspiration. It just sort of comes. Sometimes you step on a bug and you get inspired.

Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it.

I get inspired at different times and in different ways.

I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'

You never know where your influences are going to come from, or where you're going to find your inspiration.

In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.

You don't actually have ideas; ideas have you.

Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

Inspiration is a really hard thing to describe, but it's something that triggers your brain, like the first time I heard a certain guitar player that I loved or the first time that I saw a monster or the first time that I saw anything that really was an epiphany for me. It just stays with you your whole life.

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

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

Inspiration is finding something that excites you.

The creative process is mysterious; a conversation, a ride in the car, or a melody can trigger something.

You never quite know what's going to strike your imagination, or something that won't going to leave you alone, not going to leave alone, and this was one for me.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

The most valiant thing you can do as an artist is inspire someone else to be creative.

One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.

My insights come in periods of working. There are wonderful moments of surprise, but I'm superstitious enough not to want to talk about them.

All this talk about inspiration and moment is nonsense.

Inspiration comes from everywhere. From life, observing people, etc. From movies and books you love. From research.

Ideas come from somewhere. People don't come up with these ideas from nowhere. Something triggers your thoughts.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.