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About this quote

What does it mean?
Stevens distinguishes between the artist, philosopher, and priest, noting that desire begins with not having something.
In plain terms
Desire starts when you lack something, not when you have it.
What can you take from it?
Desire is driven by lack.

Where it applies

  • creative motivation
  • spiritual practice
  • self understanding

Putting it to work

  • acknowledge your lack
  • use desire to create

Questions to consider

  • What drives your creative work?
  • Is possession the end of desire?

Another view

It simplifies complex human motivations to a single cycle.

More from Wallace Stevens

  1. So poisonous Are the ravishments of truth, so fatal to The truth itself, the first idea becomes The hermit in a poet's metaphors, Who comes and goes and comes …

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  2. The poem refreshes life so that we share, For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies Belief in an immaculate beginning And sends us, winged by an unconsci…

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  3. Phoebus is dead, ephebe. But Phoebus was A name for something that never could be named. There was a project for the sun and is. There is a project for the sun…

    Permalink to quote #94

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