My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.
Interpretation
This quote expresses that the artist's work is deeply connected to their inner emotions and struggles.
Nikos Kazantzakis reflects on the profound relationship between an artist's soul and their creative output. He suggests that every piece of work is not just a product of skill but an emotional expression that seeks to articulate the cry of the artist's innermost feelings, serving as a commentary on their experiences and the world around them.
In practice
This quote would be perfect for an art exhibition to illustrate the emotional depth of the works displayed.
A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.
This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything- as if for the first time. Each morning they see a new world before their eyes; they do not really see it, they create it.
What happiness this is: to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of paradise?
I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen.
The dual substance of Christ - the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God. [...] has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. [...] My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. [...] And my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.
I fight to embrace the entire circle of human activity to the full extent of my ability.
I couldn't possibly write 'Next to Normal,' but God, I can weep and watch 'Next to Normal' five times.
Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.
First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.
Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.
If you write fiction, you have to love your characters. It's like your family. You don't have to like them, but you have to love them.
This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.