In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential that we embody. If we do not embody that, life is wasted.

When you come to think about it, nothing has any meaning, for when there was nobody to think, there was nobody to interpret what happened.

The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life.

There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his greatest gifts... the human element is frequently bled for the benefit of the creative element and to such an extent that it even brings out the bad qualities, as for instance, ruthless, naive egoism (so-called "auto-eroticism"), vanity, all kinds of vices-and all this in order to bring to the human I at least some life-strength, since otherwise it would perish of sheer inanition.

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

Eternal truth needs a human language that alters with the spirit of the times.

That which compels us to create a substitute for ourselves is not the external lack of objects, but our incapacity to lovingly include a thing outside of ourselves