“It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.”

“Business idea: Merge a billiard table with a golf course, and make the pockets as deep as a typical politician's pants.”

“I'd like to hear your opinion on this piece of Beethoven. And remember, it is not Beethoven who is being examined here.”

“If having an imagination means imagining all the things you don't have - imagining, in fact, the impossibility of your own happiness - is an imagination a good thing?”

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

“The same sensitivity that opens artists to Being also makes them vulnerable to the dark powers of non-Being. It is no accident that many creative people--including Dante, Pascal, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Beethoven, Rilke, Blake, and Van Gogh--struggled with depression, anxiety, and despair. They paid a heavy price to wrest their gifts from the clutches of non-Being. But this is what true artists do: they make their own frayed lives the cable for the surges of power generated in the creative force fields of Being and non-Being. (Beyond Religion, p. 124)”