Songfacts®:

• Speaking with Songfacts, Midón explained that "Suddenly" came to him while reading Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan, which was published in 1968 and is one of the most influential non-Christian spiritual books in recent American history. It's still read widely today; the book's origins are controversial, but Castaneda said that was based on his experiences studying under a Mexican shaman.
  
  The spiritual paradigm expressed in the book is complex (and went on to spawn not only a series of more books but also a rather large spiritual following), but essentially comes down to the notion that reality is multilayered, and we are capable of not only seeing layers beyond our own but also directly influencing them.
• "The idea (of the song) was that every moment is an eternity," Midón told Songfacts. "I remember sitting in silence listening to the rushing of time, and really grasping the meaning of that statement. The song came to me in a continuous torrent. Suddenly, I had a song."