Quotes About Inspiration

I live for the blank page.

I love Jimi Hendrix obviously, and Jimmy Page and Prince. And also Elvis Presley is a really great guitar player. I don't think he ever took lessons; he was piecing it together himself. But he has great rhythm. And rhythm, to me, you can use it to your advantage if you're not all over the fretboard.

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

I build my characters from the day they're born to the first page of the script.

I would like to say to children, 'Don't stop drawing. Don't tell yourself you can't draw.' Everyone can draw. If you make a mark on a page, you can draw.

Right now, I've never been more impressed by the new bands that we meet. I may be 10, 20 years older, but we're all on the same page about culture, music and life.

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

Getting an idea for a book is not the problem, but you need 300 ideas - an idea a page.

Sometimes I get a lyric, and the lyric, you know, comes off the page, and goes into my brain and comes out with a melody. Other times, I may create a melody first.

You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.

I would say seeing the original Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the old Fillmore was a pretty powerful influence on me.

It's just a matter of me opening up the page and whatever is written on the page, that's what I'm here to do.

President Barack Obama would do well to take a page or two from Clinton's playbook.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.

Sometimes when you write something on the page, it can seem very funny, but when you act it out - and this happens to me a lot, actually - the melancholy of the situation becomes more front and center.

Some of the best rock riffs ever written were by Jimmy Page, and I can't really name the songs, but some of the stuff he did on his first and second records is beyond brilliant.

The key thing is that you start every film from sort of a blank page, almost like you discover it like a child discovers a new world.

What is it about the blank page that makes me want to hurl myself into a game of solitaire? I ask myself these kinds of questions while I'm playing solitaire.

One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.

I like a lot of modern art. I like Chuck Close a lot. It doesn't necessarily directly influence the work I draw on the page.

The important thing for me as an artist is to keep going back to the page and doing what I do.

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.

All the really good guitar players - Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or even Bert Jansch or John Martin - I love all those people. But I didn't start out thinking that I would be a guitar player. In the beginning, I played the guitar so I could sing. I mainly concentrated on my voice.