I was discouraged about life, discouraged about people being blind, but I don't think I had a day that I ever questioned creativity. There has never been a day like that.
I believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realizes the impossibility of his task -and then continues to do it.
It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.
Yet a real artist, I've noticed, will survive anything. (Even praise, I happily suspect.)
The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse — it will not submit to the mold of flattery.
You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.
Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.
Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous expression with good humored inflexibility whether the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
