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"Know then that art is: the means by which singular, solitary invididuals fulfill themselves. What Napoleon was outwardly, every artist is inwardly. One climbs higher with each victory, as if with each new thread of a stair. But did Napoleon ever win a battle to please the public?

...therefore the artist's way must be this: to bridge obstacle after obstacle and to build step after step, until at last he can gaze into himself. Not straining, not forced, not on his tiptoes; calmly and clearly as into a landscape. After this return home into himself, deed after deed will be a leisurely joy; his life will be a creation and he will have no further need for the things that are outside. He will be spacious and all maturity's extent will be inside him...

The artist's work is a putting-in-order: he places outside himself all things that are small and transitory: his lone sufferings, his vague longings, his fearfuld reams, and those joys that will fade. Then the realm inside him becomes spacious and festive, and he will have created that worthy home for - himself."

Rainer Maria Rilke, Diaries of a Young Poet, pages 17 and 18

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