A Quote by Louis L'Amour
If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.
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If you wait for inspiration to write you're not a writer, you're a waiter.
When you find a waiter who is a waiter and not an actor, writer, musician or poet, you've found a jewel.
I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.
...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.
A lot of young writers wait for inspiration. The inspiration only hits you at the desk.
People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it.
If you're a waiter, the worst thing you can do is go to work resenting your job. This will sound trite - but it's the reality, and part of my personality - yet when I was a waiter, I tried to be the best waiter, and when I was a bingo-caller I tried to be the best bingo-caller.
When I was a waiter, I wanted to be the best waiter I could be and worked to be better at it every day.
When I was a waiter I was fired twice from the same restaurant. I guess I was that good of an actor but that bad of a waiter.
I don't wait for inspiration. I'm not, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I'm sure that if it is going to turn up, my having started work is the precondition of its arrival.
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.
I don't believe in writer's block or waiting for inspiration. If you're a writer, you sit down and write.
I'm not the kind of writer that goes, 'I'm gonna write a song about sunshine,' or, 'I've just heard a phrase, so I'm gonna write that,' and then I write a song. I'll wait for inspiration to hit, and you can't depend on it.
As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration' or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.
I have learned, as has many another better writer, to summon inspiration to my call as soon as I begin my day's stint, and not to hang around waiting for it. Inspiration is merely a pretty phrase for the zest to work. And it can be cultivated by anyone who has the patience to try. Inspiration that will not come at its possessor's summons is like a dog that cannot be trained to obey. The sooner both are gotten rid of, the better.
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