In most families there is an “outlaw,” and the embryo author is by temperament ill-adapted to the herd discipline. Its need for solitude is regarded as abnormal, its inability to work much less to play in company is rarely considered. […] The artistic temperament demands escape into the world of dreams. It cannot conform to type, and the effort to make it do so is bound to react unfavourably upon the psychology of the child.
~ Isabel C. Clarke about modernist short story writer Katherine Mansfield, born on this day in 1888 (Six Portraits, 1935)
