inspiration Quotes

If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.

I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.

And if a person is religious, I think it's good, it helps you a bit. But if you're not, at least you can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn't be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone - because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Shakespeare - I was very influenced - still am - by Shakespeare. I couldn't believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.