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.
Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.
Life is more important than art; that's what makes art important.
It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.
When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.
Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibilit y.
Perhaps 'photography' has become so all-pervasive that it no longer makes sense to think about it as a discreet practice or field of inquiry. In other words, perhaps 'photography,' as a meaningful cultural trope, is over.
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