I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction. I subscribe to National Geographic, Scientific American, Discover, and a slew of other magazines. And it is while reading articles for pleasure and interest that an interesting 'What if?' will pop into my head.
I work in a medium where I get to be totally invisible and I get great pleasure from that, being a pretty self-conscious person.
If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?
Back through the ages of barbarism and civilization, in all tongues, we find this instinctive pleasure in the imitative action that is the very essence of all drama.
Of course, some people call me one of the most well-networked people in the world, but I am a very unsocial person - I never go to a cocktail party; I am never seen at a charity event. I have one exception: I'm a member of the board for one of the big European music festivals, so I participate, with pleasure, in concerts.
Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.
People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.
I'd never had so much pleasure with another human being.
Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
She is such a good friend that she would throw all her acquaintances into the water for the pleasure of fishing them out again.
Accounts of eating Christmas sweet potatoes baked in ashes and jackrabbit stewed with white flour dumplings are testaments to pioneer resilience and pleasure - and they help inspire my own best scratch cooking.
My guilty pleasure is 'Revenge.' I've watched it from the very first episode.
It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
When you're a parent, you sing better. It becomes a pure pleasure, rather than something I have to do.
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of actually visiting the Playboy Mansion. I saw the peacocks, fed grapes to the monkeys, and even braved the fabled Grotto. After seeing the estate, I understood why anyone would be reluctant to leave.
I can't really say enough about Chris Potter. He is one of the greatest musicians I have ever known, and every second I have been on the band stand with him has been an absolute pleasure.
Pain has its reasons, pleasure is totally indifferent.
The only break I ever took was to eat. That's all I did. Work, and then quickly eat something. It became my main pleasure, having access to my comfort food.
Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life.
Ah, the pleasure, the joy - a big news story that runs and runs, that is played down by some of our journalistic colleagues, saying 'it'll never happen', only to be confirmed by the Home Secretary.
Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.
The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to spend some time looking out at this beautiful Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.
I don't feel guilty in having pleasure!
When I eat with my friends, it is a moment of real pleasure, when I really enjoy my life.
Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.
The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature.
I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.
People don't understand that it was maybe my biggest pleasure to drive an F1 car when it's wet.
I've learnt and I just want to be respected for what I've achieved on the pitch. I know I haven't achieved much off it but I do know I've given pleasure to people watching me play football over the years.
It's always a pleasure when you get to work with people that you actually really like.
Using simple equipment and daylight alone is for me a pleasure and a replenishment.
I try to read for pleasure whenever I can - it's a great way just to shut it off for a while so your brain doesn't get fried.
Half the pleasure of solitude comes from having with us some friend to whom we can say how sweet solitude is.
Beauty - what is beauty, forsooth? Form and color; that is, surface only. Fortune - what is fortune? Nothing is ever a pleasure or a real profit to him who has to labour for it. Truth - you die in the pursuit, and the sea beats the beach as it did a thousand years ago. The stolid are alone happy.
Men value things in three ways: as useful, as pleasant or sources of pleasure, and as excellent, or as intrinsically admirable or honorable.
Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
