Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

... what the artist or creative scientist feels is not anxiety or fear; it is joy. I use the word in contrast to happiness or pleasure. The artist, at the moment of creating, does not experience gratification or satisfaction... Rather, it is joy, joy defined as the emotion that goes with heightened consciousness, the mood that accompanies the experience of actualizing one's own potentialities.

If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.

Something is born, comes into being, something that did not exist before - which is as good a definition of creativity as we can get.

They pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.

To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive - to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before

One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.