Persistent Ideas Quotes

I've got at least two major project ideas that I've been chewing on for several years in my head and I've been trying to resist them both. But I have learned over the years that when they don't go away and they're still in there, you probably have to resign yourself to the fact that you're going to do something about them.

Uncommon things must be said in common words, if you would have them to be received in less than a century.

Society goes on and on and on. It is the same with ideas.

A writer's notebook is the best way in the world to immortalize bad ideas. My idea about a good idea is one that sticks around and sticks around and sticks around.

To me, ideas are like annoying salespeople that only go away once I've built them.

Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.

Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them.

I do whatever pushes me hardest. It's coming at me and I try to... it's like uninvited guest and I have to wrestle them out the door or through the window - get them out and get over with them quickly.

Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again.

I try to shake it loose-but these ideas, they cling. It's like I'm shackled to them with an iron chain. They rattle along behind me, dragging against the ground, always reminding me of their presence.

No idea is ever dead until those who believe in it say it's dead.

The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.

If there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, there is nothing more ubiquitously pervasive than an idea whose time won't go.

I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.

An idea is, in the end, always stronger than circumstances.

So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency. Why should I be the one to dream this nightmare?

The image of the frontier is probably one of the oldest images of mankind, and it is not surprising that we should find it hard to get rid of.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them.

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

The answer I have is, you know, there a lot of things you can try to build to last. And what we try to do in our work is to come up with ideas that will last. Ideas that will stand the test of time.

The idea I pursue is the one that keeps coming back to me. The characters I think about as I'm falling asleep at night or when I'm driving to the grocery store are the one's I wind up writing about.

I'm like a crockpot on low heat. My mind constantly comes up with ideas, but I abandon a lot of them after a week or two. It's the ones that keep coming to me, that keep picking up flavors, that haunt me, those are the ones that wind up getting written.