User:Ed Poor/inspiration

Some notes for an article:

Many people report good ideas popping into their heads, or coming to them in dreams. I wonder how often God or the spirit world is the source. I'd like to make a list of famous incidents of such inspiration.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge and "Kubla Khan"

On March 11, 1890, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his announcement of his benzene theory, Kekulé gave a speech in Berlin in which he revealed that both his structural theories and the structure of benzene were revealed to him in dreams. 
 * He had a nightmare about snakes biting each other. He woke up with the snake images in his head, and said, "My God! That's the formula."

J. K. Rowling - In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind. "I really don't know where the idea came from", she told The Boston Globe, "It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head."