"In Thomas Mann's preface to The Short Novels of Dostoevsky, he writes that Nietzsche felt "all intelectual isolation and alienation from civil norm, all mental autonomy and ruthlessness, are related to the criminal's mode of life and afford an experiential insight into it. It seems to me that we can go on for ever farther and say that all creative originality, all artistry in the widest sense of the word, does just that. The French painter and sculpture Degas once made the remark that the artist must approach his work in the same frame of mind in which the criminal commits his deed." (Dial Press, 1945, p. xii). [Keith McMullen]
Taken from here.
