"Being a disease of self-consciousness — insomnia perhaps inevitably plagues a disproportionately high number of writers."

"Artistic creativity is the vehicle for the transformation of the sorrows of the world into beauty, truth and art."

"Jaspers poses the ancient and Renaissance question of the relationship between diseased psyche and creativity."

"Hamlet's mind," the critic says, "is constantly occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world without."