Moment of Insight Quotes

Normally book ideas come to me in a moment.

I've always felt unsure of exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but I have these rare moments of total clarity where everything is perfectly clear.

It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.

The best I can do is, it's like a 'ding!' You're writing, and then something starts falling into place, and you hear or feel a ding. And it just feels - it's going to be okay.

I once wrote a lecture for Manchester University called « Moments of Discovery » in which I said that there are two moments that are important. There's the moment when you know you can find out the answer and that's the period you are sleepless before you know what it is. When you've got it and know what it is, then you can rest easy.

For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Roentgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new.

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

Have you ever had that moment when you looked back on something and said, 'Well, gosh, that seems obvious now... why didn't I see it then?' I like to call this the Face Palm Epiphany. Oh, hindsight, you magical, humbling thing.

Each moment is perfect and heaven-sent, in that each moment holds the seeds for growth.

I'm very organic in nature with my creativity. It just kind of wraps around me, or it's a moment I have, a click of inspiration. It's never calculated.

I like to be able to work quickly, to capture the spark of an idea before it goes out.

When you really do find a new idea or you're in and it's all working, that's the gift. It's like a musician when they hit a riff, that's when you're like all right, it's mellow. You back off and just ride it.

Inspiration can hit you in the head at any time in any context. It could happen in a conversation. Talking to someone at a party, you can get an idea. But you've got to remember those inspirations.

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it.

Curiously, a principle affects your life whether you are aware of it or not. For instance, the principle of gravity was working long before the apple ever fell on Newton's head. But once it did, and he understood it, then we as a society were free to harness this principle to create, among other things, airline flight.

Every now and then, I strike something that just goes click, you know, in my head. As Gertrude Stein used to say, it rings the bell, and I feel, this is great.

It was a real sort of synergistic 'Aha!' moment when I started acting.