Muse Quotes

“Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.”
― Christina Westover

“I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to 'make them alive'…but I'm just a fucked up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script

“There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.”
― Sappho

“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

“The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.”
― Roman Payne

“I am a creature of the Fey
Prepare to give your soul away
My spell is passion and it is art
My song can bind a human heart
And if you chance to know my face
My hold shall be your last embrace.

I shall be thy lover...

I am unlike a mortal lass
From dreams of longing I have passed
I came upon your lonely cries
Revealed beauty to your eyes
So shun the world that you have known
And spend your nights within my own.

I shall be thy lover...

You shall be known by other men
For your great works of voice and pen
Yet inspiration has a cost
For with me know your soul is lost
I'll take your passion and your skill
I'll take your young life quicker still.

I shall be thy lover...

Through the kisses that I give
I draw from you that I will live
And though you think this weakness grand
The touch of death your lover's hand
Your will to live has come too late
Come to my arms and love this fate

I shall be thy lover...

I am a creature of the Fey
Prepare to give your soul away
My spell is passion and it is art
My song can bind a human heart
And if you chance to know my face
My hold shall be your last embrace.”
― Heather Alexander

“For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue — that I had to do the job myself.”
― Anaïs Nin

“i write
because

it is
the only way

i can
reach you.”
― Sanober Khan

“Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.”
― Helen Hanson

“You are my fantasy on a cold dark night, my muse during the light of day and the one wish my soul would make”
― Grace Willows

“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.”
― Oroma Elewa

“If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, "Wake up and write the book!”
― Kerry Greenwood

“All of us need to be in touch with a mysterious, tantalizing source of inspiration that teases our sense of wonder and goads us on to life’s next adventure.”
― Rob Brezsny

“There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric....But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.”
― Plato, Phaedo

“To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Everything about you is how I wanna be;
Your freedom comes naturally;
Everything about you resonates happiness;
Now I won't settle for less...”
― Matthew Bellamy

“Today I'm out wandering, turning my skull
into a cup for others to drink wine from.
In this town somewhere there sits a calm, intelligent man,
who doesn't know what he's about to do!”
― Jelalludin Rumi

“As you entered the room
stirring air with suppleness of walk,
waking up the stillness with jingles of cymbals,
making curtains dance to the sound of bangles:
aroma wafted into air from canvas and copybooks,
my paintbrush grew restless,
and pen became enraptured;
my eyes, and hands. and this and that
became electrified.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE

To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry.”
― Rochelle Distelheim

“To be a muse is to be a wonder in someone else's eyes, flaws and all.”
― L.H. Cosway, Still Life with Strings

“Though it’s reasons to burn may vary... you are always the fuel of my fire.”
― Ranata Suzuki

“But the fact is, she [the muse] won't be summoned. She alights when it damn well pleases her. She falls in love with one artist, then deserts him for another. She's a real bitch!”
― Erica Jong, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life

“A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.”
― Tori Amos, Piece by Piece

“Out of the red and silver and the long cry of alarm to the poet who survives in all human beings, as the child survives in him; to this poet she threw an unexpected ladder in the middle of the city and ordained, 'Climb!”
― Anaïs Nin

“One must give himself completely to his art and not hold back. Throw caution to the wind. Embrace the muse. Make love to your art.”
― Harley King

“The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner; these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives”
― Alfred de Vigny, Stello

“I thought I was a fool for no one;
But ooh baby I'm a fool for you;
You're the queen of the superficial;
how long before you tell the truth?”
― Matthew Bellamy

“And you will suck the life out of me
Bury it
I won't let you bury it
I won't let you smother it
I won't let you murder it

And our time is running out
And our time is running out
You can't push it underground
You can't stop it screaming out
How did it come to this?”
― Matthew Bellamy

“Great ideas emerges from useless fragments of thoughts.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Instead of discussing with myself every morning whether I feel inspired or not, I step into my office every day at nine sharp, open the window and politely ask the muse to enter and kiss me. Sometimes she comes in, more often she does not. But she can never claim that she hasn’t found me waiting in the right place.”
― Peter Prange