I love artists and creative people. They make me crazy, but they're rarely boring. When they do get boring, it's because they are working on something they are so passionate about that they become obsessive. An artist caught up in an idea is like an eighteen-wheeler stuck in the sand, just grinding its wheels over and over. It can go on for months! But even when they are boring this way, it is fascinating because being passionate and obsessive is still an intense way of being alive and present to the beauty and complexity of life. When you're around artists, you are around people who are definitely living life to the fullest. Even their despair is gritty and real and fully committed, and I always feel like I'm living that line from the transfiguration scene in the Gospel: "How good it is for us to be here!"

—Barbara Nicolosi, "The Artist", in David Taylor ed., For the Beauty of the Church