The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.

It is strange the way ideas come when they are needed.

... the culmination of a successful train of association, which may have lasted for an appreciable time, and which has probably been preceded by a series of tentative and unsuccessful trains. The series of unsuccessful trains of association may last for periods varying from a few seconds to several hours. […] Sometimes the successful train seems to consist of a single leap of association, or of successive leaps which are so rapid as to be almost instantaneous.

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.

To get fame and money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and to display the evil.

Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!

Patience is the master key to every situation.

Invention does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.

Solitude, a rest from responsibilities, and peace of mind, will do you more good than the atmosphere of the studio and the conversations.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them.

Of genius the only proof is, the act of doing well what is worthy to be done, and what was never done before.

Of genius, in the fine arts, the only infallible sign is the widening the sphere of human sensibility, for the delight, honor, and benefit of human nature.

Genius is the introduction of a new element into the intellectual universe, or, if that be not allowed, it is the application of powers to objects on which they had not before been exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce effects hitherto unknown.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

Only through pure contemplation … can ideas be comprehended; and the nature of genius consists in pre-eminent capacity for such contemplation. Now, as this requires that a man* should entirely forget himself and the relations in which he stands, genius is simply the completest objectivity, i.e., the objective tendency of the mind, as opposed to the subjective, which is directed to one’s own self — in other words, to the will. Thus genius is the faculty of continuing in the state of pure perception, of losing oneself in perception, and of enlisting in this service the knowledge which originally existed only for the service of the will; that is to say, genius is the power of leaving one’s own interests, wishes, and aims entirely out of sight, thus of entirely renouncing one’s own personality for a time, so as to remain pure knowing subject, clear vision of the world; and this not merely at moments, but for a sufficient length of time, and with sufficient consciousness, to enable one to reproduce by deliberate art what has thus been apprehended.

[Genius requires] freshness and wildness of imagination, a raging ambition, an unusual gift for learning and growing, a depth and breadth of thought and spirit.

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed poets and writers citizens can change the world.

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.