Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.

The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

[To simplify] is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without -- and yet preserve the spirit of the whole.