" An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in this world. Along with Plato's divine madness there is also a divine discontent, a longing to find the melody in the dischords of chaos, the rhyme in the cacophany, the surprised smile in time of stress or strain.
It is not that what is is not enough for it is; it is that what is had been disarranged, and is crying out to be put in place. Perhaps the artist longs to sleep well every night, to eat anything without indigestion; to feel no moral qualms; to turn off the telvision news and make a bologna sandwich after seeing the devastation and death caused by famine and drought and earthquake and flood. But the artist cannot manage this normalcy. Vision keeps breaking through, and must find means of expression".
- Madeliene L'Engle from Walking on Water
