Struck by a phrase and holding it...

This happens more than I'm aware of. Some I just print off and place on my bulletin board - like this one from Ray Bradbury~

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

And from Orhan Pamuk~

The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where that comes from - but stubbornness, endurance. The lovely Turkish expression 'to dig a well with a needle' seems to me to have been invented with writers in mind.

We sit at tables and desks with pen and with paper, with fancy notepads, with silver pencils and leatherbound journals purchased in Paris, with computers and typewriters, with fancy Maccy colouredy sleeked sci-fi-ish screens and wait for the muse, the magical one to touch us, to find the word, the letter, the phrase that will resonate underneath the story of the inner people we harbour and nurse through all the toils and troubles of our everyday lives with everyday jobs and everyday relationships.

How grand the passion, how passionate the grandness of our desires.

For that alone, this trudge along the earthly plane is worth every sling and arrow.