Just This Side of Madness Quotes

“If for some reason creative channels are closed or the ability to find some outlet for the creative drive is blocked, then the course of the drive is deflected and the energy will be turns toward destructive ends: mental illness, alcoholism, drugs, sex, suicide.”
― Carol Ann Beeman, Just This Side of Madness: Creativity and the Drive to Create

“The person who accomplishes his creative goals and excels as an artist is distinguished from equally or more creative peers by the primary attribute drive. It is the inner force of this psychological compulsion not to fame, nor to wealth, but to the compelling images of one’s own mind which sets a person apart as an artist. To succeed where so many try and fail, the creative person must have not only sensitivity, talent, and all the thousand other things we more or less think contribute to artistic accomplishment, but in addition he must deal with the demands of an internal pressure which constantly drives him toward acts of creation.”
― Carol Ann Beeman, Just This Side of Madness: Creativity and the Drive to Create

“For the artist the drive to create is synonymous with the drive to survive and death is its antithesis. But survival without creative recourse in a world of madness or incapacity is synonymous with death.”
― Carol Ann Beeman, Just This Side of Madness: Creativity and the Drive to Create

“Unavoidably and in many cases, sadly, the woman artist must grope her way through the emotional cesspool of her own outrage, her fear, and her anxiety at being treated on the whole as a member of a stereotyped group in society rather than being recognized as an individual. All the problems of the creative lifestyle are doubly difficult and doubly debilitating because as an artist she must first establish herself as a person. Her view of the world, her concern for others, her drive for the tangible creative expressions of the images in her mind are tangled with these negative, frustrating emotions which by their very nature drain her creative powers.”
― Carol Ann Beeman, Just This Side of Madness: Creativity and the Drive to Create

“[We] should be willing to treat children with the same kind of respect we expect from them…”
― Carol Ann Beeman, Just This Side of Madness: Creativity and the Drive to Create