Frank Yerby Quotes

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration.

There's nothing romantic about my work... I don't believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.

I work all day, morning and afternoon, just about every day. If I sit there like that for two or three years, at the end I have a book.

In writing novels, you have to believe in yourself or there would be no way to sustain it. But you also have to give good evidence regularly for having that faith in self-either with quality goods or with, at least, "good efforts." Working hard will do when inspiration is not forthcoming.

I don't believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. Some of the time you know you're cooking, and the rest of the time, you just do it.

Start early and work hard. A writer's apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he's almost ready to begin. That takes a while.

Discipline is the servant of inspiration.

All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.

Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work.

You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.

When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don't believe too much into inspiration, only I'm waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It's a little too easy to say that.

At Pixar, 'Wall-E' was our ninth film, and they've all been successes - more than that, they've all really touched people. Everybody wonders, 'How do you do it?' Well, how do you not do it? You just work hard.

I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It's kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It's a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.

Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.

Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.

I'm always trying. Between every book, I think, 'Well now, it's time to get down to the serious stuff.'

If you want to write, just believe that you can, because it's about perseverance.

The heart of creativity is discipline.

Inspiration is for amateurs.

Here's the truth about telling stories with your life. It's going to sound like a great idea, and you're going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you're not going to want to do it. It's like that with writing books, and it's like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.

I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.