I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect, either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him. – Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, 1911
Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with mans physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed. – Charles Baudelaire
For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential – the imagination. – Lawrence Durrell
