Marcel Proust Quotes

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great works of art.

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

A possible link between 'madness' and genius is one of the oldest and most persistent of cultural notions.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

I go through major crises every few months, but then I have great peaks of belief and creativity. I'm a weird kind of animal.

Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord in humans everywhere.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

I think that I'm so psychotic and so mentally ill that if I could tap into that I could do something really interesting.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries.

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor

Mental illness and creativity are - it's a thin line in between the two. I tend to believe that.

Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.

Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.

A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.

Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?

I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.

Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.