"...To have your own world, and to live in it, doesn't mean that you are necesarrily blind to the real world, so-called. If a writer weren't familiar with the everyday world, if he hadn't been so steeped in it that he revolted against it, he wouldn't have what you call his own world. An artist carries all worlds within him. And he's just as vital a part of this world as anyone else. In fact, he's more thoroughly of it and in it than other people for the simple reason that he's creative. The world is his medium. Other men are content with their little corner of the world - their own little job, their own little tribe, their own little philosophy, and so on. Damn it, the reason why I'm not a great writer, if you want to know, is because I haven't taken the whole wide world unto me yet. It isn't that I don't know about evil. It isn't that I'm blind to people's viciousness, as you seem to think. It's something other than that. What it is I don't know myself. But I will know, eventually. And then I'll become a torch. I'll light up the world. I'll expose it down to it's very marrow... But I won't condemn it! I won't because I know too well that I am part and parcel of it, a significant cog in the machinery."

(The Rosy Crucifixion - Henry Miller)

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