We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat, so that we can know who we are. So that we can see, oh, that happened, and I rose. I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose.
~ Maya Angelou from an interview in Psychology Today, February 2009
Any work of art is ultimately an entry-point into the transcendent, revelatory of not
only subtle, but celestial beauty and power; and if the given work is not so, it cannot
properly be called art at all...All works of art, in other words, are religious, sacred, or
nothing.
