Laura

“To gladden the reader with attractive interweavings of language is not the purpose of creative work. My purpose, when I sit down to a work, is not to gladden anybody, either myself or any other, but to make that work as perfect as possible. Gladness afterwards, when it’s done. … Gladness afterwards – and a lot of it. But a lot of tiredness too. This tiredness of mine when the work is finished is something I honour. It means that there was something to overcome and that the work did not come to me without cost. It means it was worthwhile waging the battle. That same tiredness I honour in the reader. If he is tired from my work, it means he has read well, and read something good. The reader’s tiredness is not devastating, but creative. Co-creative. It does honour to both the reader and me.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Art in the Light of Conscience: Eight Essays on Poetry

“The process of remembering contributes to that which endures.”
― Adrian Del Caro, Hölderlin: The Poetics of Being

“Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or rebel against it.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“To oppose something is to maintain it.

They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.

To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. Thus proof is a word not often used among the Handdarata, who have chosen not to treat God as a fact, subject either to proof or unproof or to belief: and they have broken the circle, and go free.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness