As quoted in The Artist Observed: 28 interviews with contemporary artists (1991) by John Gruen, p. 3
Context: I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.
“The sinner must feel far worse before he ever has a right to feel any better.”
2000s, Saved or Self-Deceived, Part 2 (2007)
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John F. MacArthur 6
American pastor and author 1939Related quotes
“You must do right before you feel good.”
Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette (25 July 1785)
1780s
“Meeting someone you like and dating him is supposed to make you feel better, not worse.”
Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
“[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.”
Letter to Colette O'Niel, October 23, 1916; published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970, p. 87
1910s
Cada vez que leo algo que han escrito contra mi, no sólo comparto el sentimiento sino que pienso que yo mismo podría hacer mejor el trabajo, quizá debería aconsejar a los aspirantes a enemigos que me envíen sus criticas de antemano, con la seguridad de que recibirán toda mi ayuda y mi apoyo. Hasta he deseado secretamente escribir con seudónimo, una larga invectiva contra mí mismo.
"Jorge Luis Borges visto por él mismo" http://www.diariomedico.com/entorno/ent271299com.html (Jorge Luis Borges seen by himself) In the case of this work, the Spanish version seems to have been published after the English version.
Autobiographical Notes (1970)
Context: Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.
When asked if he considers himself to be a pessimist and a cynic ** Interview with Request Magazine, October 1994 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/request_10-94.shtml,
Soundgarden Era