Avoidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioral disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships

It is a tragic paradox that the very qualities that have led to man's extraordinary capacity for success are also those most likely to destroy him.

If we did not look to marriage as the principal source of happiness, fewer marriages would end in tears.

It is true that many creative people fail to make mature personal relationships, and some are extremely isolated. It is also true that, in some instances, trauma, in the shape of early separation or bereavement, has steered the potentially creative person toward developing aspects of his personality which can find fulfillment in comparative isolation. But this does not mean that solitary, creative pursuits are themselves pathological.

The creative person is constantly seeking to discover himself, to remodel his own identity, and to find meaning in what he creates.

When a man suffers from delusions he is described as mad but when a million do so they belong to a world religion

Inspiration cannot be willed, though it can be wooed.