Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

actually pictured all the marvels and terrors of a manifold world which it was suddenly struggling to conceive.

this yearning for the new and the remote, this appetite for freedom, for unburdening, for forgetfulness; it was a pressure away from his work, from the steady drudgery of a coldly passionate service.

By indulging this more readily than he does, perhaps we can avoid the allure of the more destructive desires/longings that pull at us.

wove rich, varied strands of human destiny together under one single predominating theme in the fictional tapestry

A marriage of sober, painstaking conscientiousness with impulses of a darker, more fiery nature had had an artist as its result, and this particular artist.

nearly everything great which comes into being does so in spite of something—in spite of sorrow or suffering, poverty, destitution, physical weakness, depravity, passion, or a thousand other handicaps. But that was not merely an observation; it was a discovery, the formula of his life and reputation, the key to his work.