It's important to be yourself. What art does for everyone, helps you understand yourself and in a distilled way, whether it's a painting or a scene in acting or a joke. It distills something about everyday life that can be important to you.
Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought.
Memory is an act of meaning-making. It collects the disparate pieces of our lives and distills them.
Love distills desire upon the eyes, love brings bewitching grace into the heart.
With a few exceptions like Kraftwerk, most great 20th century Western music is in some way American-based. And the great paradox of America, the paradox that distills America, is that this greatest of American contributions to humanity, this American contribution that probably has influenced more people around the world for the good, that probably has brought more people around the world unqualified joy, was born of America's greatest evil, slavery. Or one of the two great evils anyway, counting the European extinction of those who were on the continent first.
The more we incline our hearts and minds toward God, the more heavenly light distills upon our souls. Gradually, things that before seemed hazy, dark, and remote become clear, bright and familiar with us.
