Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.
Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.
Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union.
The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities.
Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.