Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude – these are everything.
Works of art always spring from those who have faced the danger, gone to the very end of an experience, to the point beyond which no human being can go. The further one dares to go, the more decent, the more personal, the more unique a life becomes.
Now for some heartwork.
Do you remember how life yearned out of childhood toward the “great thing?” I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one.
Life and death: they are one, at core entwined. Who understands himself from his own strain presses himself into a drop of wine and throws himself into the purest flame.
The most visible joy can only reveal itself to us when we’ve transformed it, within.
The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.
Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism.
What do the contours of your body mean, laid out like the lines on a hand, so that I no longer see them except as fate?
Animals see the unobstructed world with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned back upon themselves, encircle and seek to snare the world, setting traps for freedom.
Go into yourself. Dig into yourself for a deep answer.
To be an artist means not to compute or count...
He who does not at some time, with definite determination consent to the terribleness of life, or even exalt in it, never takes possession of the inexpressible fullness of the power of our existence.
He who understands one thing understands everything, for the same laws are in all.
But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is-solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.
In the night, I wish to speak with the angel to find out if she recognizes my eyes, if she will ask me: do you see Eden? And I’ll reply: Eden burns.
Speaking of August Rodin: He raised his world above us in an immense arc, and made it a part of nature.
Poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out as out of mountains.
I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.
Draw near to Nature. Then try like some first human being to say what you see and experience and love and lose.