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First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me. -- Gore Vidal
I'm not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work. -- Ray Bradbury
There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse. -- Sappho
O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention. -- William Shakespeare
Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse. -- William S. Burroughs
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
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! -- William Shakespeare
I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time. -- John Updike
Each of the Arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a Muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them. -- Eliza Farnham
Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance. -- Louis Untermeyer
When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back! -- Judy Collins
It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel. -- William Butler Yeats
I honor health as the first Muse. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Guardian is only as strong as its Muse. -- Susie M. Hanley
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story -- Robert Fitzgerald
The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before. -- Roger Ebert
The Muse is mute when public men Applaud a modern throne. -- William Butler Yeats
I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal. -- Arthur Rimbaud
The Muse gave the Greeks genius and the art of the well-turned phrase. -- Horace
When I was from Cupid's passions free, my Muse was mute and wrote no elegy. -- Ovid
Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:We are but mortals, and must sing of men." -- Theocritus
Muse of the many twinkling feet, whose charms are now extending up from legs to arms. -- Lord Byron
Philosophy is a bad master for poetry; religion worse; and politics self-serving will never serve the Muse. -- Shirley Geok-lin Lim
What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse. -- Ray Bradbury
The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner; these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives -- Alfred de Vigny
I love him (Muse) too much, and you can't hurt someone that you love that much . . . unless you're family. -- Jack White
Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? -- William Shakespeare
There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life. -- Alexander Pope
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public. -- George Santayana
If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak. -- Stephen Nachmanovitch
Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write; Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline. -- Jonathan Swift
Music gives the soul this inner self-expression, a voice. It gives the soul a sound, the sound of the Muse. -- Mickey Hart
Yes. I guess it's the foolish romantic in me, but you see, I don't think that sex is my Muse. -- Peter Murphy
Give all to love: Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the Muse,- Nothing refuse. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Often the Muse will not respond to direct and logical requests. She must be lured in with the playful and gentle. -- Jill Badonsky
I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night, Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to reascend... -- John Milton
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. -- Homer
Muse is a tyrant. It gets you out of bed in the twilight of the morning and forces you to create something! -- Mehmet Murat ildan
With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her ah, when Did I not need her, solitary else? -- Richard Henry Stoddard
My Muse sits forlorn She wishes she had not been born She sits in the cold No word she says is ever told. -- Stevie Smith
Nothing which is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be changed from its own to another language without destroying its sweetness -- Dante Alighieri
I'm only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me. -- May Sarton
...why is my cat a Muse? the cat has the rare grace of never saying a word too much? Mark Twain ...that's why ..." -- John Geddes
Thus does the Muse herself move men divinely inspired, and through them thus inspired a Chain hangs together of others inspired divinely likewise. -- Plato
Love passed, the Muse appeared, the weather of mind got clarity new-found; now free, I once more weave together emotion, thought, and magic sound. -- Alexander Pushkin
In spite of Virtue and the Muse, Nemesis will have her dues, And all our struggles and our toils Tighter wind the giant coils. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The richest of all lords is Use, And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The professional will not tolerate disorder... He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown. -- Steven Pressfield
All men owe honor to the poets - honor and awe; for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life. -- Homer
I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember. -- David Antin
But Fear and the Muse in turn guard the place Where the banished poet has gone And the night that comes with quickened pace Is ignorant of dawn. -- Anna Akhmatova
Good old-fashioned, puritanical work guilt is, for me, a better colleague than any Muse. If I reach my weekly word target by Friday afternoon, then the weekend is guilt-free. -- Jim Crace
American Muse, whose strong and diverse heart So many men have tried to understand But only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land. -- Stephen Vincent Benet
Within a bony labrinthean cave, Reached by the pulse of the aerial wave, This sibyl, sweet, and Mystic Sense is found, Muse, that presides o'er all the Powers of Sound. -- Abraham Coles
So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die, Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough, And Virtue also says: We are not yet friends enough. -- Stevie Smith
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Change shakes us up, and we can thank our Muse for it... we are driven by change to create, to excel, and to become better humans, perhaps even more sensitive humans! -- Max Elliott Slade
Muse is the brain-sensing headband that allows you to track your cognitive and emotional activity. It boosts your attention and helps you become more aware of the emotions that you're having. -- Ariel Garten
And when her biographer says of an Italian woman poet, 'during some years her Muse was intermitted,' we do not wonder at the fact when he casually mentions her ten children. -- Anna Garlin Spencer
Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader browner shade; Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade, Beside some water's rushy brink With me the Muse shall sit, and think. -- Thomas Gray
Muse, time has taught me that all metaphysical systems, even historical facts given as truths, are hardly that, so I amuse myself with more agreeable lies; I no longer read anything but novels. -- Mary Wortley Montagu
The power of our Muse lies in her meaninglessness. Even the style can turn one into a slave if one does not run away from it, and then one is doomed to repeat oneself. -- Gueorgui Pinkhassov
Muse is going to be part of everyday life as an indispensable tool helping people overcome mental, physical and emotional barriers. It's going to allow us to free ourselves in ways we never thought possible. -- Ariel Garten
Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore; The Muses are ten, and the Graces are four; Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face, She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace. -- Callimachus
The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal -- Mark Twain
I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse's lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation. -- Arthur Quiller-Couch
I have a vast 'bone pile' of stillborn or abandoned poems along with jottings and wisps from the great beyond that I tend to scan. Sometimes that leads somewhere, and sometimes the Muse is just on sabbatical. -- Maxine Kumin
The more I learn and read about the 10th Muse i realize what a great fan base and cult following she has. I'm going to try to live up to the fantastic image of the 10th Muse! -- Cindy Margolis
Yeah, after making Pablo Honey, we started experimenting with cloning myself in order to double the band's creative energy. However, the experiment was a failure, and the defective Thom Yorke clone escaped. And formed a band called Muse. -- Thom Yorke
We knew when we started the Daily Muse, we wanted a recruiting-focused business model rather than an advertising-focused one. We felt like publishers were being forced to go to more and more extreme lengths to monetize through advertising. -- Kathryn Minshew
Muse. Mu-se. It's a great thing, for someone to feel that they can draw inspiration from you. And I don't think it's necessarily a man 'taking' from a woman. It can go both ways, both can stimulate, excite. -- Chloe Sevigny
We're never alone. As soon as we step outside the campfire glow, our Muse lights on our shoulder like a butterfly. The act of courage calls for infallibly that deeper part of ourselves that supports and sustains us. -- Steven Pressfield
Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. -- Henry David Thoreau
A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection. -- Margaret Atwood
I'd really like having a couple days of being a rock star, although I'd rather be a backup - like maybe the drummer for Muse... It would also be fun to be gorgeous, like be Charlize Theron, just for a couple of days. -- Stephenie Meyer
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each Seene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage. -- Alexander Pope
I'd really like having a couple days of being a rock star, although I'd rather be a backup - like maybe the drummer for Muse It would also be fun to be gorgeous, like be Charlize Theron, just for a couple of days. -- Stephenie Meyer
[The Muse of our Fiction of the future] will lead you - if you are humble and honest with her - straight into a World of Working Men, crude of speech, swift of action, strong of passion, straight to the heart of a new life. -- Frank Norris
He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen. -- Plato
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For such a career I lacked both endurance and inclination:the stress of ambition left me cold,while the Muse, the creative spirit, was forever urging on methat haven of leisure to which I'd always leaned.The poets of those days I cultivated and cherished:for me, bards were so many gods. -- Ovid
Perversity is the muse of modern literature. -- Susan Sontag
You should treat a muse like a fairy. -- Paulo Coelho
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. -- Barbara Tuchman
The most potent muse of all is our own inner child. -- Stephen Nachmanovitch
Fool," said my muse to me. "Look in thy heart and write. -- Philip Sidney
Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, And every conqueror creates a muse. -- Edmund Waller
Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance. -- Edgar Degas
Women are our most miraculous muse, an enchanted intangibility that encourages all art. -- CeeLo Green
Artists are visited by the Muses, or tormented by their own passions and demons. -- Wes Nisker
If a muse knocked at our studio door tomorrow, how many of us would even notice? -- Carole Katchen
Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse. -- Robert Genn
A successful artist is inspired by his muse, and his muse is inspired by the payment of a commission. -- Robert Breault
One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need. -- Piers Anthony
Why does my muse only speak when she is uhnhappy? She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy. -- Stevie Smith
I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire. -- Eric Clapton
Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work. -- Nick Cave
Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, 'Do this, do that,' but it's my demon who provokes me. -- Ray Bradbury
With her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,' Rooney Mara gave fashion fans a new Gothic-chic muse. -- Derek Blasberg
I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse. -- Taylor Swift
The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write. -- Glen Hansard
One of the things that helps me tell a story through music is to create a character. I have to have a muse, whether it's Frida Kahlo, Martha Graham, Marlene Dietrich, or Pippi Longstocking. -- Madonna Ciccone
For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn't poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse. -- Alice Walker
I don't need a Hollywood girl. They're crazy. If you're with an actress, you don't know who you're going to come home to every day. But I wouldn't mind a relationship with the right girl. Every artist needs a muse. -- JC Chasez
You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm. -- Barbara Kingsolver
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit/Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste/Brought death into the world, and all our woe,/With loss of Eden, till one greater Man/Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,/Sing heavenly muse -- John Milton
I think I look for a muse in women. Someone I can just picture in my mind. Someone who respects herself and others. It isn't so much the things she says, it's mainly what she does. That's what make her all the more beautiful. -- JC Chasez
The essential truth is that sometimes you're worried that they'll find out it's a fluke, that you don't really have it. You've lost the muse or - the worst dread - you never had it at all. I went through all that madness early on. -- Robin Williams
My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that. -- Nick Cave
Writing is a spiritual practice in that people that have no spiritual path can undertake it and, as they write, they begin to wake up to a larger connection. After a while, people tend to find that there is some muse that they are connecting to. -- Julia Cameron
The muse on my shoulder is very sensitive and does not abide claptrap of any kind... Only when I am totally immersed... absorbed in work... does she allow something magical to happen and I become aware of a faint heartbeat and gentle breath emanating from my brush. -- Catherine Stock
The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while 'Foster the People' plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work. -- Maggie Stiefvater
I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them. -- Isabel Allende
I show up in my writing room at approximately 10 A.M. every morning without fail. Sometimes my muse sees fit to join me there and sometimes she doesn't, but she always knows where I'll be. She doesn't need to go hunting in the taverns or on the beach or drag the boulevard looking for me. -- Tom Robbins
For almost the first year of The Muse's life, I would do 5 to 8 networking events a week. And I don't necessarily think that's the right path for everyone, but I realized that as an entrepreneur, one of my strengths was finding the right people who could help us. I didn't come into startups with any network. -- Kathryn Minshew
The muse is not an angelic voice that sits on your shoulder and sings sweetly. The muse is the most annoying whine. The muse isn't hard to find, just hard to like - she follows you everywhere, tapping you on the shoulder, demanding that you stop doing whatever else you might be doing and pay attention to her. -- Harlan Coben
Bugs Bunny is my muse. -- Billy Collins
Woo the muse of the odd. -- Lafcadio Hearn

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