delicate equilibrium

 
The artist knows something else, wordless, oftentimes, but he knows it deep within him: that if it were not for the struggle and the loneliness he undergoes in his search for integrity there would be no strength or beauty in his work. (And though art is not for the sake of beauty, beauty must be there or the profound revelation the artist makes would be unbearable.)

The artist in us knows, the poet in us knows: it is the mark not of ordeal but of mastered ordeal that gives a face, a life, a great event or a great work of art its style. The wound is there but the triumph also, the death and the birth, the pain and the deep satisfactions: it is all there in delicate equilibrium, speaking to us.

~Lillian Smith, novelist