At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being--the reward he seeks--the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.
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If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know.
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The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
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Our cravings canno't be comforted by our creativity, although we like to think they can. A million words after writing 'Look Homeward Angel' Thomas Wolfe was still tormented. After a million notes, Beethoven was not happy, after a million brush strokes, Van Gogh cut off his ear.
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There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.
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Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, that is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.
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Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.
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Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.
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You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.
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It is comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved.
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If a man has talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded and has a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know.
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One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.
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The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.
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