Thomas Merton Quotes

Psychologists call it "defocused attention," where you broaden your horizons, let your mind float and drift a bit. Coffee keeps us sharp and alert. It's great if you're driving at 3 o'clock in the morning. It's not so great if you're trying to come up with the next violin concerto.

My best ideas come to me at unexpected moments, like when I'm reading children's books to my kids (the pictures inspire me), shopping, driving somewhere, seeing different things.

Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.

Our imagination just needs space. It's all it needs, that moment where you just sort of stare into the distance where your brain gets to sort of somehow rise up.

I feel like I'm the most creative when I'm bored.

Staring up at the sky on a bright, sunny day makes me dream and gives me ideas.

I long for a kind of quiet where I can just drift and dream. I always say getting inspiration is like fishing. If you're quiet and sitting there and you have the right bait, you're going to catch a fish eventually. Ideas are sort of like that. You never know when they're going to hit you.

...there's nothing wrong with occasionally staring out the window and thinking nonsense, as long as the nonsense is yours.

And it’s only by going nowhere - by sitting still or letting my mind relax - that I find that the thoughts that come to me unbidden are far fresher and more imaginative than the ones I consciously seek out.

I've never had a really creative idea sitting at my desk. All the big ideas that made a difference happened when I was playing outside.

He who passes not his days in the realm of dreams is the slave of the days.

When you're home or you're working, your mind just isn't allowed to just roll on like it does when you're watching the scenery go by. You're hurdling through space but you're not really moving. ...It's that dreaminess, that ability to just get dreamy while you're looking out the window and you see something...and it makes you think of something else, and all of a sudden the words are just flowing out of you.

Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life.

Daydream, imagine, and reflect. It’s the source of infinite creativity.

On rides you see things that trigger ideas. And most the time it's just not doing anything but riding ... letting it all go.

Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.

I try to maintain a healthy dose of daydreaming, to remain sane.

The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.

I've always had a slightly overactive imagination.

I get lost in my right brain, especially in creative things.

I daydream all the time, and I like that quality.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

I'm a daydreamer.

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.