When I take a break, even just a brief one, the creative energy flows in. Only then do I have anything of value to share with others. Once I recognized this, I stopped feeling guilty about taking time for myself.

You don't have to be like anyone else. You just need to learn more about your own creative self and start blooming.

I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go.

(about William Blake)As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven.

Writing was a defeat, it was a humiliation, it was coming face-to-face with yourself and seeing you weren't good enough.

There is a sort of light surrounding Abel, something pure and strong radiates from him no matter where he is or what he's doing. Sometimes Cain thinks he possesses a soul without shadows. That's what people want to be close to. But if so, it's not like a child's, for a child's soul is delicate, its flickering flame needs no more than the opening of a door onto the world to blow it out. Nothing can destroy Abel's light. In his presence one never feels wicked, only foolish. That darkness which in solitude can seem so powerful, occasionally even intoxicating, seems risible in his company.