Jonah Raskin > Quotes

“Whitman influenced his work, he said, though he also acknowledged William Butler Yeats’s role in shaping his poetry: “Yeats was right when he said that ‘out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.’” He added, “Quarrel with yourself. Your quarrels with yourself often make the best poems. Tell yourself your own secrets, and reveal yourself. The purpose of art is to provide relief from your own paranoia and the paranoia of others. You write to relieve the pain of others, to free them from the self doubt generated by a society in which everyone is conniving and manipulating.”
― Jonah Raskin, [American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation] [Author: Raskin, Jonah] [February, 2006]