Writing From The Heart Quotes

There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo. ~ Alan Watt

I can't write to please everyone, but someone, somewhere will be touched if I put my heart into it. ~ Sara Winters

Set fire to cities and nations, to hearts and minds, to the very core of every human spirit. Make sure your words seep into the skin of the reader, leaving trace minerals that sustain the ailing human shell. Make them pay attention. Set fire to the soul. Anything less is an abomination to creation. ~ Susan Marie

If a plot is a novel's skeleton, and characters are the muscle, then theme is its soul. ~ Janice Hardy

Sometimes writing can take you to such dark places it can be nearly impossible to come back from; a part of you is left there, in the words you've bled onto paper, in the emotions you've let loose upon the page, and eventually, the world. ~ D. Michael Hardy

A writer feels happy when the words connect with the reader's heart. ~ Avijeet Das

I am broken the way most writers are, stories leaking through the cracks. ~ Victoria Schwab

The last chapter in 'Alice in Worcestershire' is called 'Writing the book'.
I started to write that 'Diary' chapter at the very beginning of the process and followed it through to the end... speaking to the reader.

My decision to do this was because I've often read autobiographies and wondered how the author felt and how it impacted them writing about painful memories that had been locked away in a deep forgotten place.
I wanted to know what was going in their 'present' life while they were writing; about the struggle with sharing their inner secrets and... I'm... inquisitive. (nosy)!

It took me over five years to finish 'Alice in Worcestershire' because sometimes, I was simply too drained to continue. Periodically, I updated the 'Diary' chapter and, thankfully, it's enthusiastically appreciated by readers. ~ Eskay Teel

The chair in the police station was uncomfortable and I couldn't sit in it. It was a cheap looking chair in a cheap looking room meant for people who are wrong. ~ Ken Macrorie

A novel is like a dream in which everyone is you. They're all parts of yourself. ~ Janet Fitch

I write because I must. It's not a choice or a pastime, it's an unyeilding calling and my passion. ~ Elizabeth Reyes

Write it. Just write it. Write it on receipts in the car while you wait for your kid to finish their piano lessons, scribble on napkins at lunch with friends. Type on crappy typewriters or borrow computers if you have to. Fill notebooks with ink. Write inside your head while you're in traffic and when you're sitting in the doctor's office. Write the truth, write lies. Write the perfect spouse. Write your dreams. Write your nightmares. Write while you cry about what you're writing, write while you laugh out loud at your own words. Write until your fingers hurt, then keep writing more. Don't ever stop writing. Don't ever give up on your story, no matter what "they" say. Don't ever let anybody take away your voice. You have something to say, your soul has a story to tell. Write it. There is never any reason to be afraid. Just write it and then put it out there for the world. Shove it up a flag pole and see who salutes it. Somebody will say it's crap. So what? Somebody else will love it. And that's what writing's about. Love. Love of the art, love of the story, and love for and from the people who really understand your work. Nobody else matters. Love yourself. Love your work. Be brave. Just write. ~ Melodie Ramone

If we don't feel, what's the use of it? It's only words on a page. ~ Mark A Morris

I, myself, write to change my life, to make it come out the way I want it to. But other people write for other reasons: to see more closely what it is they are thinking about, what they may be afraid of. Sometimes writers write to solve a problem, to answer their own question. All these reasons are good reasons. And that is the most important thing I'll ever tell you. Maybe it is the most important thing you'll ever hear. Ever. ~ Patricia MacLachlan

There is just too much cruelty, selfishness and corruption in the world not to want to crush the poisonous will of those who cause it by writing about it as powerfully as I can. ~ Carla H. Krueger

Try as we might, we write what we write ~ B.G. Thurston

I like to think I've written something worth reading when I cry the tears of the characters. ~ Carla H. Krueger

To achieve works of meaning, a writer (or any artist) must cut into himself and leave his soul on the canvas, exposed for anyone to do with what they please. Reject it. Spit on it. Swallow it whole. Whatever. It is done. ~ Mardra Sikora

Don't write what you know - what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you - and interests you deeply - and your readers will catch fire at your words. ~ Valerie Sherwood

Write your dreams in journal,note book, card or on a cork. When you pen down your dreams, an a inner strength and divine power is activated for your to work towards the fulfillment of your dreams. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. ~ Ray Bradbury

A writer tears open their soul for you
We lay bare our fears and woes for you
We pour our heart onto the page for you
We unleash our demons for you
Letters like blood smear the page for you
The world's pain we absorb for you
A delicate path of sanity walked for you

Only for you to -

Crumple the page in disdain
You will not abdicate your reign
In the oblivion of life, you'll remain

As I continue to write for you ~ Theresa Jacobs

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned. ~ Oscar Wilde

I think one of the best gifts you could offer me, as a writer, is to engage with my words, to tell me how they felt to you. To let me, for a moment, see my words through your eyes. And it feels like you read my words so carefully, that you were gentle with them, nurturing. I feel loved and seen by the way you responded. Thank you for caring for the words that rise from my soul. ~ Ashley Asti

Writers are like supreme beings. We can create worlds in a matter of days and we can destroy them just as fast. ~ Linda Nelson

Asking a writer why they like to write {in the theoretical sense of the question} is like asking a person why they breathe. For me, writing is a natural reflex to the beauty, the events, and the people I see around me. As Anais Nin put it, "We write to taste life twice." I live and then I write. The one transfers to the other, for me, in a gentle, necessary way. As prosaic as it sounds, I believe I process by writing. Part of the way I deal with stressful situations, catty people, or great joy or great trials in my own life is by conjuring it onto paper in some way; a journal entry, a blog post, my writing notebook, or my latest story. While I am a fair conversationalist, my real forte is expressing myself in words on paper. If I leave it all chasing round my head like rabbits in a warren, I'm apt to become a bug-bear to live with and my family would not thank me. Some people need counselors. Some people need long, drawn-out phone-calls with a trusted friend. Some people need to go out for a run. I need to get away to a quiet, lonesome corner--preferably on the front steps at gloaming with the North Star trembling against the darkening blue. I need to set my pen fiercely against the page {for at such moments I must be writing--not typing.} and I need to convert the stress or excitement or happiness into something to be shared with another person.
The beauty of the relationship between reading and writing is its give-and-take dynamic. For years I gathered and read every b ~ Rachel Heffington

Personal accounts flow from the heart and tend to be the most difficult to write. It's nearly impossible to remove the emotional undertones, and it takes so much courage to open those pages to everyone else. ~ Javier A. Robayo

Where do storytellers find the wisdom to discover their own stories? From no place more mysterious than their own hearts. ~ Marion Dane Bauer

Nothing leaves a scar upon an Authors heart more than a book they've written with purpose going unread. ~ Mark W. Boyer

A writer's voice emanates from their interest and compulsions that absorbs them completely. Only by fully committing himself or herself to a pet subject or issue can the writer develop a thematic tone that speaks to other people with authority and serenity. The quality of their literary voice is the crucial part of the writer's legitimacy, and their authenticity cannot come from mimicking other writers' style, but must evolve naturally from their inner sanctity and must flow effusively from an inner necessity. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Indentations on the page, words, my friends, and I will share them with you. ~ Victoria Sawyer

I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who's half a man,
Or the man who's half a boy. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Furlough?" He said.
"What?" said the first hood irritably.
Despereaux shuddered. His own brother was delivering him to the dungeon. His heart stopped beating and shrunk to a small, cold, disbelieving pebble. ~ Kate DiCamillo

Fiction gives us a reach into the lives of individuals that would otherwise be but a closed door. If we are gifted with a desire to tell tales, then we should tell them ... if only to reach but a few. ~ James D. Maxon

Writing is more about telling other peoples' stories than your own ~ Carla H. Krueger

I want to question societal norms, encourage people to think in new ways. ~ Carla H. Krueger

I also know that not everyone will like what I do, and that there are many people who do love my work, and so I write for them, and for my own pleasure, and try not to brood too much over those who have different tastes. And I have written enough books now that I know the self-doubt and the anxiety are part of the creative process, and drive me to keep trying to do better, and keep me from becoming too cocksure about my writing, which is a form of creative death. ~ Kate Forsyth

Stories are the way we see ourselves. ~ Sandra Marinella

The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you. ~ Richard Peck

A real piece of writing is one in which the writer has tried to enrich not only the book, but also his understanding of the words. The words themselves have to be open to new ideas and suggestions, and the writer himself must have the audacity to attempt new things and to risk failure ~ Karl Wiggins

When you have nothing left to lose, it's easy to dive deep into those deep, dark hidden places and write your truth. I'm there. ~ Lori Lesko

Writing is taking human experience and wrapping it up into a package of your own ideas and hoping someone will pull the bow smiling on top to see what's hiding inside. ~ Roderick Vincent

My advice to writers is this:
Walk, talk, breathe, laugh, cry, fall, rise, fail, succeed, run, jump, love, hate, hide, seek, learn, work, play, feel, LIVE.
Then write it down. ~ S. Alex Martin

[Tom] Wolfe's books offered a whole new world to step into, and whilst at times you could accuse him of being somewhat long-winded, he had an incredible quality of prose and a bravery of writing from the heart. He believed in being autobiographical at all times. ~ Jude Law

I eat, breath and sleep and that makes me like everyone else. When I write, I become something much greater than flesh & bone; something that will stay behind long after that part of me is gone. Writing makes me special, readers make me everlasting. ~ C.K. Webb

I am writing from the heart and having a fresh approach to things. We [Theocracy] are obviously not trying to musically re-invent the wheel here, and you can certainly hear our influences, but we also don't sound like a copycat of any one band. ~ Matt Smith

I don't write to chase away my demons ~
I wield my pen as a weapon...calling those bastards to war! ~ Muse

My pen beats faster as I write with my heart ~ Munia Khan

I understand now that a Trojan of literary achievement writes out of passion, out of necessity. ~ Merce Cardus

I'm an observer. I am fascinated by people and how their minds work (and, of course, my own). Why we are the way we are, why we do the things we do – and that interest drives my writing. I was a physicist before fiction claimed my soul, so I'm an experimenter. I'm open to different ways of thinking. I like exaggerating, making things up. I'm a very open, honest person in life and that's the way it should be, but when it comes to fiction, I want to pour a few sharp objects into the comfort zone. Our fears are powerful, yet we've all got a desire to laugh and be entertained. I could have followed the same path I do now as a scientist, examining how the brain works. Ironically I get much more freedom to experiment as a writer. That's why I love it. ~ Carla H. Krueger

They lived happily ever after. It said so. In the book. They were the last words on the page. Happily ever after. Despereaux was sure that he had read exactly those words time and time again.
Lying on the floor with the drum beating and the mice shouting ... Despereaux had a sudden, chilling thought: Had some other mouse eaten the words that spoke the truth? Did the knight and the fair maiden really not live happily ever after? ~ Kate DiCamillo

Submitting to history allows us to remember our society's past. Although writing and art express history, it's our humanity which keeps all of us striving for an improved future. ~ K.P. Kollenborn

My sincere desire is to write in a style that is simple enough for a child to understand, yet powerful enough to change lives. ~ Rev. Lorna Lorraine Wilson

What happened was that sometimes I was, from a young age, put in the theater to watch movies because they kept me quiet and they kept me entertained, and they got me out from under the feet of my parents. So from a very early age, I went to the movies and I soon grew to prefer the life of the movies to my own life. The reality that the movies offered was preferable to the reality that I was experiencing. I became a child movie addict. I would go in with great pleasure and I'd never look at what was playing
what was playing was unimportant. The fact was that I was entering a new world, an environment where not only was it much more attractive than my life was ordinarily, but also I could manipulate it to an extent by coming and going, and by looking at scenes or not, which I could not in my own life. I was subjected to my own domestic life. But I discovered a kind of power at the movies. ~ Donald Richie

No one can tell you what you can and cannot put in your book. So be brave and just write! ~ Chrys Fey

Sometimes a story catches your imagination so much it has to be told. That is what I love about writing. It lets the images in your mind burst forth into words drawing a vivid picture that takes you away on a journey that would otherwise be impossible. ~ S. E. Smith

Words are the writer's sorcery, our dark arts and our sleight of hand. They're our enchantment and our temptation ~ Karl Wiggins

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wordsworth

You will have a story in there ... or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word. ~ Patricia MacLachlan

You write what you know, and I know rock and roll. ~ Greg Kihn

When I write, I write obsessively. I try to pace myself, but some fires are too hot to put out. ~ Carla H. Krueger

There is a chest inside my heart, where a magical world is hidden. With my novels, I hand to you the key to that world. ~ P.J. Mann

If you don't want anyone to know anything about you, don't write anything. ~ Pete Townshend

For that is what you are, that is who you are – you are an author. You cannot cease to write any more than you can cease to breathe...This difficult season will pass – your eyes and mind will inevitably be opened once more to the wealth of ideas all around you...And even if the ideas around you fall short of what you seek – even if, as you say, you have not the heart to write… perhaps it is your heart you ought to write of. - Laurie to Jo, on writing ~ Trix Wilkins

Each time I write, I reaffirm my soul. ~ Rob Bignell, Editor

Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. ~Sharon O'Brien ~ Sharon O'Brien

What do you do when your head - your imagination is filled with tales to last a hundred lifetimes?

You focus on the really good ones! ~ Storm Princeholm

My first draft is usually how I meant it, but my second and third drafts is how I want to be understood. ~ Selena Haskins

Just now they kissed, with India coming up close on her toes to see if she could tell yet what there was about a kiss. ~ Eudora Welty

I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Words are the bones. Writing is the lungs. Reading is like breathing. ~ T.L. Crain

The whole point about vision is that it's very individual, it's very personal, and it has to be confessional. It has to be something which hurts - the pulling out of it and putting it on the page hurts. Art can be about the individual writer's response to his or her condition, and if that response comes out of a predigested belief about what the audience wants to hear about the writer's condition, then it has no truth, it has no validity. You either write with your own blood or nobody's. Otherwise it's just ink. ~ Clive Barker

Why were we tortured? We were in love and life was a fast current swarming around our ankles, threatening to topple us into the wet part of the planet. It was intense, that's why we were tortured. It was enormous and exploding like palm tree. Iris was my Yuri-G, my Delilah, my Stella Marie. Strong dark women you had to love with a strong dark heart that throbbed in gorgeous pain because love is terrible. I mean, ultimately. It would go away like a needle lifting from the vinyl at the end of the song, we knew this. The music would cease, one of us would die or else we'd just break up, and this drove us to drink from each other like two twelve-year-olds sneaking vodka from the liquor cabinet, trying to get it all down, trying to get as fucked up as possible before we got caught. ~ Michelle Tea

The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. He justifies his existence by a movement which, like freedom, springs from his heart but which leads outside of himself. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation. ~ Michael Jackson

Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish. ~ Eugene Ionesco

And suddenly she began to sing. Keen, heart-piercing was her song as the song of the lark that rises from the gates of night and pours its voice among the dying stars, seeing the sun behind the walls of the world ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Of course I'm ready. But are you ready for your part of our agreement?"
"Kereseth? Yeah," she said. "You get us in, we'll get him out."
"I want it done simultaneously--I don't want to risk him getting hurt because of what I'm doing," I said. "He's hushflower-resistant, so it will require quite a bit to knock him out. And he's a skilled fighter, so don't underestimate him."
Teka nodded, slowly. And stared, chewing the inside of her cheek.
"What happened? You look all…frantic, or something," she said. "You guys have a fight?"
I didn't answer.
"I don't get it," she said. "You're obviously in love with him, why do you want him gone?"
I considered not answering that, either. The feeling of his rough chin scratching my cheek, and his mouth, warm against my skin, haunted me still. He had kissed me. Without prompting, without cunning. I should have been happy, hopeful. But it wasn't that easy, was it?
I had dozens of reasons to give her. Akos was in danger, now that Ryzek had realized he could use him as leverage over me. Eijeh was lost, and maybe Akos would be able to accept that once he was home, with his mother and sister. Akos and I would never be equals, as long as he was Ryzek's prisoner here, so I had to make sure he was freed. But the one closest to my heart was the reason that came tumbling out.
"Being here, it's…breaking him," I said. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. "I can't watch anymore. I won't." ~ Veronica Roth

My advice for people is to love the world they are in, in whatever way makes sense to them. It may be a devotional practice, it may be song or poetry, it may be by gardening, it may be as an activist, scientist, or community leader. The path to restoration extends from our heart to the heart of sentient beings, and that path will be different for every person. ~ Paul Hawken

Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality
for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely. ~ Terri Windling

Between 10 and 20 percent of people with anorexia die from heart attacks, other complications and suicide; the disease has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Or Kitty could have lost her life in a different way, lost it to the roller coaster of relapse and recovery, inpatient and outpatient, that eats up, on average, five to seven years. Or a lifetime: only half of all anorexics recovery in the end. The other half endure lives of dysfunction and despair. Friends and families give up on them. Doctors dread treating them. They're left to stand in the bakery with the voice ringing in their ears, alone in every way that matters. ~ Harriet Brown

One guy named Lars was writing a six-hundred-page poem on Hitler's last days in the bunker, written from the viewpoint of Eva Braun's dog. His first reading consisted of ten minutes of barking. "It sets the mood," he explained, and he was correct if that mood was to punch him hard in the face. Natalie's ~ Harlan Coben

If you stand to close to your reflection you do not see the full picture of who you are. When one heart speaks, other hearts cannot help but listen. Always keep your mouth closed when cleaning the toilet. All from my book. ~ Richard Bell

I never willfully want to write the same record twice, which is probably why I jump from project to project. But I can't ignore that there are things that inspire me, and I love celebrating those. ~ Alan Palomo

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it ~ Karl Popper

I like acting and things when I like the writing. If I don't like the writing, I don't like acting. I think in some ways everything starts for me from the place of writing. ~ Greta Gerwig

In December the first frosts came with the full moon, and then my nights of vigil held a quality harder to bear. There was a sort of beauty to them, cold and clear, that caught at the heart and made me stare in wonder. From my windows the long lawns dipped to the meadows, and the meadows to the sea, and all of them were white with frost, and white too under the moon. The trees that fringed the lawns were black and still. Rabbits came out and pricked about the grass, then scattered to their burrows; and suddenly, from the hush and stillness, I heard that high sharp bark of a vixen, with the little sob that follows it, eerie, unmistakable, unlike any other call that comes by night, and out of the woods I saw the lean low body creep and run out upon the lawn, and hide again where the trees would cover it. Later I heard the call again, away in the distance, in the open park, and now the full moon topped the trees and held the sky, and nothing stirred on the lawns beneath my window. I wondered if Rachel slept, in the blue bedroom; or if, like me, she left her curtains wide. The clock that had driven me to bed at ten struck one, struck two, and I thought that here about me was a wealth of beauty that we might have shared. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words, the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership, Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe. ~ Michael D. Higgins

If a heart could fail in its pumping, a lung in its breathing, then why not a brain in its thinking, rendering the world forever askew, like a television with bad reception? And couldn't a brain fail as arbitrarily as any one of these other parts, without regard to the blessing and cosseting that, everyone was so eager to remind you, disentitled you from unhappiness? ~ Caroline Kettlewell

God's love gives in such a way that it flows from a Father's heart, the well-spring of all good. The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious; as among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, "It comes from a hand we love," and look not so much at the gift as at the heart. ~ Martin Luther

All Through Eternity


All through eternity
Beauty unveils His exquisite form
in the solitude of nothingness;
He holds a mirror to His Face
and beholds His own beauty.
he is the knower and the known,
the seer and the seen;
No eye but His own
has ever looked upon this Universe.


His every quality finds an expression:
Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;
Love, the life-giving garden of this world.
Every branch and leaf and fruit
Reveals an aspect of His perfection-
They cypress give hint of His majesty,
The rose gives tidings of His beauty.

Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;
Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.
When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart
entangled in tresses.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.

They have together
since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step ~ Rumi

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. ~ Judith Butler

I had so much going on in my heart, and it didn't often go together or make sense or even stay the same from moment to moment. How did I speak from a heart that didn't undersand itself? ~ Jennifer Brown

Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,

And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,

May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,

Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth!

With light heart may she rise,

Gay fancy, cheerful eyes,

Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice;

To her may all things live, from pole to pole,

Their life the eddying of her living soul!

O simple spirit, guided from above,

Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice,

Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time. ~ Heather O'Neill

The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it's piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it's ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it'll ever see it. On the day I die, it'll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart. ~ Leah Raeder

According to a group of New England college students, writing in the year 1920, an alien was the following:
"A person hostile to his country."
"A person against the government."
"A person who is on the opposite side."
"A native of an unfriendly country."
"A foreigner at war."
"A foreigner who tries to do harm to the country he is in."
"An enemy from a foreign land."
"A person against a country." etc ...
Yet the word alien is an unusually exact legal term, far more exact than words like sovereignty, independence, national honor, rights, defense, aggression, imperialism, capitalism, socialism, about which we readily take sides "for" or "against. ~ Walter Lippmann

The kind of sermon which is likely to break the hearer's heart is that which first has broken the preacher's heart, and the sermon which is likely to reach the heart of the hearer is the one which has come straight from the heart of the preacher. ~ Charles Spurgeon

They came generally from people writing theses on fantasy or on the Dark Is Rising books. They were full of questions I'd never thought about and false assumptions that I didn't want to think about. They would ask me in great detail for, say, the specific local and mythical derivations of my Greenwitch, a leaf-figure thrown over a Cornish cliff as a fertility sacrifice, and I would have to write back and say, "I'm terribly sorry; I made it all up." They told me I echoed Hassidic myth, which I hadn't read, and the Mormon suprastructure, which I'd never even heard of. They saw symbols and buried meanings and allegories everywhere. I'd thought I was making a clear soup, but for them it was a thick mysterious stew.

from "In Defense of the the Artist" in Signposts to Criticism of Children's Literature (1983) ~ Susan Cooper

He was out there alone with himself, composed, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart to the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts that fall from the Unknown. In such moments, offering up his heart as the flowers of night emit their perfume, lit like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding in ecstasy the midst of creation's universal radiance, perhaps he could not have told what was happening in his own mind; he felt something floating away from him, and something descending upon him, mysterious exchanges of the soul with the universe. ~ Victor Hugo