Art is both love and friendship, and understanding; the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things, it is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of awareness of the spirit.
~ Ansel Adams in a letter to Cedric Wright, 1937, as quoted in ART AS A WAY OF LIFE, ed. by Roderick MacIver
So long as we do not die to ourselves, and so long as we are identified with someone or something, we shall never be free. The spiritual way is not for those wrapped up in exterior life.