He became a poet the way other men become monks: as a devotional practice, as an act of love, and as a lifelong commitment to the search for grace and transcendence.
When artists are burdened with the label of “genius,” I think they lose the ability to take themselves lightly, or to create freely.
When the time is ripe for certain things, they appear at different places, in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring.
Lastly, remember what W. C. Fields had to say on this point: “It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.
You can believe that you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master, but something far more interesting – its partner – and that the two of you are working together toward something intriguing and worthwhile.
Thank heavens we have an earth, or where would we sit?
Don’t rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you.
This was not a considered decision. Nor was it a gesture of charity, draped in a warm mantle of maternal kindness. No, this was an act of intuition, sprung from a deep and unspoken feminine knowledge of how the world functions.
A creative life is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.
Whenever you are faced with the prospect of purchasing gloves, you must ask yourself if you would be bereft to lose one of them in the back of a taxicab. If not, then don’t buy them. You should only buy gloves so beautiful that to lose one of them would break your heart.
Rest assured, dear friend, that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor. I will give you plenty of examples. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies 1405.
The continent did not appeal: France was filled with irritating people; Spain was corrupt and unstable; Russia, impossible; Italy, absurd; Germany, rigid; Portugal, in decline. Holland, thought favorably disposed toward him, was dull. The United States of America, he decided, was a possibility.
It’s good to be sorry – but don’t make a fetish of it. The one good thing about being Protestant is that we are not expected to cringe forever in contrition. Yours was a venial sin, Vivian, but not a mortal one.′ ‘I don’t know what that means.’ ‘I’m not sure I do, either. It’s just something I once read. Here is what I do know, however: sins of the flesh will not get you punished in the afterlife. They will only get you punished in this life. As you’ve now learned.
I think that the difference between a tormented creative life and a tranquil creative life is nothing more than the difference between the word awful and the word interesting.
Well... “why” is a hard question to answer in any language.
But this is a city that gets born anew in the fresh eyes of every young person who arrives here for the first time. So that city, that place – newly created for my eyes only – will never exist again. It is preserved forever in my memory like an orchid trapped in a paperweight. That city will always be my perfect New York.
You are free, because everyone is too busy fussing over themselves to worry all that much about you. Go be whomever you want to be, then. Do whatever you want to do. Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life. Create whatever you want to create – and let it be stupendously imperfect, because it’s exceedingly likely that nobody will even notice. And that’s awesome.
Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.
He realized that “failure has a function. It asks you whether you really want to go on making things.
In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L’ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means ‘I have experienced that on my own skin.’ Meaning, I have also been burned or scarred in this way, and I know exactly what you’re going through.