Scott

“Freud did admit, though only grudgingly, that artists were not merely neurotics who used their gifts to evade reality. Art brings about a reconciliation between the two principles in a new way. An artist is originally a man who turns away from reality because he cannot come to terms with the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction which it at first demands, and who allows his erotic and ambitious wishes full play in the life of phantasy. He finds a way back to reality, however, from this world of phantasy by making use of special gifts to mould his phantasies into truths of a new kind, which are valued by men as precious reflections of reality. (SE, XII.224) This strange conception of art and artist implies that, although the artist may just escape falling into a neurosis, his art is still an indirect way of obtaining instinctual satisfactions which, if he were better adapted to reality, he would either enjoy or else renounce. In other words, art is primarily escapist. In an ideal world in which everyone had matured sufficiently to replace the pleasure principle by the reality principle, there would be no need for art. This conclusion, coming as it does from a brilliant writer who was deeply appreciative of both literature and the visual arts, will strike most readers as extremely odd. If Freud had lived long enough to become familiar with modern biological thinking, he might have revised his concepts.”
― Anonymous

“No, there's going to be no even tenor with me. The more uneven it is the happier I shall be. And when my time comes to die, I'll be able to die happy, for I will have done and seen and heard and experienced all the joy, pain, thrills — every emotion that any human ever had — and I'll be especially happy if I am spared a stupid, common death in bed.”
― Richard Halliburton