Scott Erickson

“inspiration is rarely the first step. When it does come out of the blue, it’s glorious. But it’s much more in your own hands than the divine-intervention-type beliefs we all tend to have about inspiration. Most of the time, inspiration has to be invited.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“Maybe it’s a cliché, but you have to focus on verbs over nouns—what you want to do, not what you want to be.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“Being willing to sound bad is one of the most important pieces of advice that I can give you. Writing a song will teach you that it’s OK to fail. And more than that, that it’s actually good to fail, and that you can come to appreciate the gifts of failure.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song

“People couldn’t become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked. Crowley had thought about this for some time and, around about 1023, had said, Hang on, that only works, right, if you start everyone off equal, okay? You can’t start someone off in a muddy shack in the middle of a war zone and expect them to do as well as someone born in a castle. Ah, Aziraphale had said, that’s the good bit. The lower you start, the more opportunities you have. Crowley had said, That’s lunatic. No, said Aziraphale, it’s ineffable.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch