Cesare Pavese Quotes

Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.

Sometimes you do know where the ideas are coming from and sometimes you don't. You might get a song coming through that you just don't know about.

A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

There's something about the shape that a poem takes in my mind before I write it that has to do with suddenness.

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

I don't know where the ideas come from, and it's terrifying. They seem to be absolute flukes. When I was in my 20s, I'd walk around with a notebook all the time and make sure I wrote down anything that occurred to me. Now I'm just hoping that some sort of event will descend on me.

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

I write in the mornings, in the bright daylight. But I get most of my good ideas after the sun has gone down and the dark is on the land.

When you have that first flash of what you think is going to be a great idea-from the mouth, from the hands-that's an amazing feeling. I don't think anything's quite as good as that.

Photographs are not only points of reference... they're often triggers of ideas.

Sometimes it could be just during the day, when I'm riding in the car or on the plane. I'll hear somebody say something that strikes a chord and I write it down and write bars at a time, and then when I'm in the studio I go to those bars and I'm like, "Maybe I should make a song about this."

My poems often start with an idea, some kind of inspiration. I don't expect anything. Every now and then something like "The One Truth" comes out.

For each book, there's a back story of where the idea came from. Sometimes it's derived from a current event or topic of discussion. Often it begins with a character. And often, I have NO idea what sparked the idea. It's just there.

Everything's a film idea if this is what you do.I've always been secretly confident that I'd never run out of ideas,because I've never had any. I just live my life, see things theway I do, and I'm just looking for a notion to hang it all on.

When the idea comes, I often can't remember where it came from. I remember very little about writing the first series of Hitchhiker's. It's almost as if someone else wrote it.

Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with.

Songwriters can’t explain. You get an idea and you don’t know where it’s come from. And if you’re lucky, you have a pencil or pen and can write it down.

There are just long gaps where I can't find a point of insertion, I can't find a good opening line, I can't find a mood that I want to write into. But once I do, once a line falls out of the air, or I get a little inkling of a subject and I recognize that, it's like the sense that a game has started.

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop… suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

My writing comes from ideas that make a sound in my heart.

Well, I have an idea, usually a visual image of some sort. A setting. A particular, I don't know, urban scene, a particular time of day. Something that grips my imagination for some reason.

When I find research really rewarding is when one piece of information gives you an idea for a story. That's when it's great.

The toughest question has always been, "How do you get your ideas?" How do you answer that? It's like asking runners how they run, or singers how they sing. They just do it!

I write a little something every day, even though I don't write a song [every day]. Everything inspires me. I'll come up with a line, or somebody will say something that will trigger something.

Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.