On giving ourselves permission...

"To allow ourselves to spend afternoons watching dancers rehearse, or
sit on a stone wall and watch the sunset, or spend the whole weekend
rereading Chekhov stories -- to know that we are doing what we’re supposed
to be doing -- is the deepest form of permission in our creative lives.
The British author and psychologist Adam Phillips has noted, 'When we
are inspired, rather like when we are in love, we can feel both
unintelligible to ourselves and most truly ourselves.' This is the
feeling I think we all yearn for, a kind of hyperreal dream state. We
read Emily Dickinson. We watch the dancers. We research a little known
piece of history obsessively. We fall in love. We don’t know why, and
yet these moments form the source from which all our words will spring."

- Dani Shapiro (from her new book, Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life -- which I'm reading now with great pleasure, and recommend)