“The mystics are the only ones who have gained a glimpse into what is possible when this same capacity [for creation] is used primarily in the service of the individual himself instead of for the creation of art.”

The artist always has been and still is a being somewhat apart from the rest of humanity.

The amount which cannot be harnessed and domesticated, but insists on its own form of activity rather than one which is offered ready made, is the energy used for the creation of art.

When one looks back over human existence however, it is very evident that all culture has developed through an initial resistance against adaptation to the reality in which man finds himself.

Fundamentally the male artist approximates more to the psychology of woman, who, biologically speaking, is a purely creative being and whose personality has been as mysterious and unfathomable to the man as the artist has been to the average person.

There is one great and universal wish of mankind expressed in all religions, in all art and philosophy, and in all human life: the wish to pass beyond himself as he now is.

Woman is a being dominated by the creative urge and . . . no understanding of her as an individual can be gained unless the significance and effects of that great fact can be grasped.

The attitude and reactions of artists toward their art children reveal an attitude similar to that which mothers in general possess toward their children. There is the same sensitivity to any criticism, the same possessive pride.

The creator does not create only for the pleasure of creating but . . . he also desires to subdue other minds.

There is magic in this moist world, in how the mind lets go, slips into sleepy water, circles and nuzzles the banks of palmetto and wild iris, how it seeps across dreams, smears them into the upright world, rots the wood of treasure chests, welcomes the body home.

We are destined for joy no matter how difficult our daily life. Something in us responds to the happiness other people experience, because we glimpse life as God intended it to be.

In history and in life one sometimes seems to glimpse a ferocious law which states: to he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away.

For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and valor. Of the endless fluid passage of the humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who – one word- love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him, he felt a warning, a shaft of terror.

Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?

Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.

It has been modified by many great revolutions, brought about by an inner mechanism of which we very imperfectly comprehend the movements; but of which we gain a glimpse by studying their effects:

I’d walked too close to heaven and gotten a glimpse. The hell I’d lived before her no longer appealed to me.