“Art is magic delivered from the lie of being true.”

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

“You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting...

It will come if it is there and if you will let it come.”

Gertrude Stein, “A Conversation”

“But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work.”

Plotinus, excerpt from Ennead 1.6, “On Beauty”

“No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes.”

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“…one must stand outside and laugh
since to go in is to be lost.

…It is not the plunder,
it is the accessibility to experience.”

Marianne Moore, excerpt from “New York”

“You sea! I resign myself to you also – I guess
what you mean;
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers;
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me…”

Walt Whitman, excerpt from “Leaves of Grass“

“The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark."

John O’Donohue, excerpt from Anam Čara

“When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

C.S. Lewis, excerpt from Til We Have Faces

“Behold, I say — behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.

Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water and understand delight.”

Mary Oliver, excerpt from “To Begin With, the Sweet Grass”

“He who went through the curriculum of misfortune offered by possibility lost everything, absolutely everything, in a way that no one has lost it in reality. If in this situation he did not behave falsely towards possibility, if he did not attempt to talk around the dread which would save him, then he received everything back again, as in reality no one ever did even if he received everything tenfold, for the pupil of possibility received infinity…”

Soren Kierkegaard, excerpt from Dread

“Everything without exception which is of value in me comes from somewhere other than my self, not as a gift but as a loan which must be ceaselessly renewed.”

Simone Weil, excerpt from “The Self,” Gravity and Grace