Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

I mean, what do you think creativity is? Nothing but self-indulgence. And the more self-indulgent it is, the more interesting it becomes. So I think that part of creativity is also falling in love with your own narcissism: accepting it, using it as an asset.

The creative process has been a little bit of an experience, really - to try and make that work for me. The only way I know how to do that is just to remain genuine, humble, and true to everything I know already in my life.

All good work requires self-revelation.

The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain.

My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.

Everything is a subject; the subject is yourself. It is within yourself that you must look and not around you... The greatest happiness is to reveal it to others, to study oneself, to paint oneself continually in [one's] work.

Anybody who dedicates himself to exploring the human condition, there's always a detached eye that's watching. In any situation, a little part of me is observing it, to see if there are any raw materials to create something else later.

I'll never be August Wilson - but what I can be is more of myself.

It's a very hard thing for all of us to accept ourselves at all the different stages - the horrible side, the wonderful side, the adorable side - and who you are as a grownup. And then to bring what you learned as a child to that grownup: that is the magic of creativity.

I'm always consciously trying to make what I feel is missing.

I wrote songs when I was little, and I wrote a journal, but I don't think I knew how to let that truth come out yet.

I don't feel I have to be Jackson Browne. Still, I like to say something.

What matters is what happens in the soul of an artist when you're playing.

Making music is an inward and outward gesture at once. I make it because I'm communing with a side of myself that might help me look people in the eye. But at the same time, I'm reaching out, in a way.

The true cure for self-righteousness is self-knowledge.

You can spend time self-identifying and figuring out what you are on that, but at some point, you just want to be who you are and not walk around telling people.

The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.

There are so many selves in everybody, and just to explore and exploit one is wrong, dead wrong, for the creative person.

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.

We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It's the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching has become a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.

Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.

Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the “I,” with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands, and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore, there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two.

One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.