There is a muse (traditionally, the muses were women, but mine's a guy; I'm afraid well just have to live with that), but he's not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. Hes a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think its fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless hes on duty), but he's got the inspiration. Its right that you should do all the work and burn all the midnight oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There's stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.

~On Writing, Stephen King ~

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isnt a support-system for art. Its the other way around.

~On Writing, Stephen King~

I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing...[and] that fear may be intense. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn't need the feather; the magic was in him.

~On Writing, Stephen King~

We need help, the Poet reckoned.

~Edward Dorn~

I'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay.

-Dave Matthews Band~

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and entrances; and one man in his own time plays many parts.

-Shakespeare~

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

~ Henry Miller~

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

~ George Orwell~

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

~ Frederick Langbridge ~

Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.

~Norman Vincent Peale~

The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs...one step at a time.

~Joe Girard ~

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears,however measured or far away.

~Henry David Thoreau~

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

~General George S. Patton~

Love is a perky little elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.

~Matt Groening~

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy~

I wish I was the full moon shining off your Camaro's hood.

~Eddie Vedder~

Write hard and clear about what hurts.

~Hemingway~

Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph, sink your thumbs into his windpipe in the second, and hold him against the wall until he tag line.

~Paul O'Neil~

Writers aren't exactly people; they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person.

~F. Scott Fitzgerald~

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

~Oscar Wilde~

What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window.

~Burton Rascoe~

The difference between fiction and reality?  Fiction has to make sense.

~Tom Clancy~

Writing is putting the words on the paper until the voices in your head shut up.

~Frank Fradella~

That's what I tell people.  My official version of the truth.

~Survivor, Charles Palahniuk~

Sell crazy someplace else.  We're all stocked up here.

~Jack Nicholson, As Good As It Gets~

It's the boy.  He's bewitched her with words.

~The Duke, Moulin Rouge~