And no book gives a deeper insight into the inner life of the Negro, his struggles and his aspirations, than, The Souls of Black Folk.
Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.
A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art.
Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
I have quite a rich inner life, and I'm constantly looking for a way to express that. I haven't found it yet in acting. When you're playing a character, you're only going to find outlets for very specific parts of your inner world.
If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.
If you want to paint the inner life, you paint it from the exterior. From the exterior, you breathe the inner life into your painting.
If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don't be discouraged... just be willing to change.
I was very academically inclined. But my inner life was in such turmoil. I'd go home and my home life was so miserable that it just felt like I was doing everything that I was supposed to do. I did all my chores, made really good grades, and I was excelling at school, but I wasn't happy.
The big biography of Lincoln necessarily had to do so much with his political career, his ambitions, his accomplishments in public, with less time to spend on his private life, his inner life, and I thought this might be a way of getting at that.