It armed them with a philosophy, an aesthetic, of escapism. It tended to create in those of us who were later to become artists not only a special but a privileged character: each of us tended to think of himself as a person who was exempt from the human laws that govern other men, who was not subject to the same desires, the same feelings, the same passions—who was, in short, a kind of beautiful disease in nature, like a pearl in an oyster.
Yes, artists are all very special snowflakes.
