Now, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.

What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.

Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.

What Kierkegaard said about love is also true of creativity: every person must start at the beginning.