“The artist’s response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write. Not to impose restrictive rules, but to rejoice in pattern and meaning. For there is something in all artists which rejects coincidence and accident…We must meet the precariousness of the universe without self-pity, and with dignity and courage.” - Madeleine L'Engle.

"One writes out of one thing only - one's own experiences. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art." - James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 1955.

"To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." - Roberta Flack (1989)

“Suffering in the Jewish tradition conveys no privileges. It all depends on what one makes out of that suffering. It is possible to suffer an entire lifetime, and still not give up the art of laughter.” – Eli Wiesel, after his imprisonment in a concentration camp and the loss of all of his loved ones

"You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you" - Mary Tyler Moore.

"Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it." - James Baldwin (1962)