spark

...We receive but what we give, And in our life alone does nature live: Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! ...thou need'st not ask of me What this strong music in the soul may be! What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, This beautiful and beauty-making power. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Dejection: An Ode"

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? -- William Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations on Immortality"

A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces. - Wole Soyinka

A writer or artist has to simultaneously swim in the river and also sit at the bank to see it flow. - Ngugi wa Thiong'o