“When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.”

Source: Daughter of the Blood

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Source: Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

Author’s introduction (p. 3)
Downbelow Station (1981)

Source: Extras

(5 August 2007)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2007
Context: It has been my experience that many people actually believe that writers live in a state of perpetual inspiration. Maybe this is the source of that annoying "Where do you get your ideas from?" question. Maybe the people who believe writers live in a state of perpetual inspiration are the same people who ask that question, thinking — wrongly — that there's a trick of some sort involved. And if a writer would but tell them the trick, then they too would have access to the bottomless well of ideas and live in a state of perpetual inspiration. In my case, at least, there is no bottomless fucking well of ideas, and if I only wrote when I truly felt inspired, I'd starve and live in a cardboard box at the corner of Crack and Whore (which is to say, the corner of Ponce and Piedmont). But, that said, there does have to be a spark. What people ought to be asking me is "Where do you get those tiny, little infinitesimally faint sparks that you then somehow manage to blow up into ideas?" Of course, my answer would be, "I have no inkling whatsoever."

What's the use of walking with God? p. 216 (19 June 1966)
Jesus Our Destiny
Context: Today, when the Gospel is under attack from all directions, I too must ask the question: What profit do you get from your unbelief? I never get the impression that people have peace of mind or are happier for all their unbelief. No, my friends.

Source: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008