These are two quotes from Rebecca West's 'Black Lamb and Grey Falcon'. They appear separately in the text but - I find - belong together outside it.
But we knew that when one goes into a shop and buys a cake one gets nothing but a cake, which may be very good, but is only a cake; whereas if one goes into the kitchen and makes a cake because some people one respects and probably likes are coming to eat at one’s table, one is striking a low note on a scale that is struck higher up by Beethoven and Mozart.
— Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience. The artist says, 'I will make that event happen again, altering its shape, which was disfigured by its contacts with other events, so that its true significance is revealed'; and his audience says, 'We will let that event happen again by looking at this man's picture or house, listening to his music or reading his book.' It must not be copied, it must be remembered, it must be lived again, passed through those parts of the mind which are actively engaged in life, which bleed when they are wounded and give forth the bland emulsions of joy, while at the same time it is being examined by those parts of the mind which stand apart from life. At the end of this process the roots of experience are traced; the alchemy by which they make a flower of joy or pain is, so far as is possible to our brutishness, detected. What is understood is mastered. If art could investigate all experiences then man would understand the whole of life, and could control his destiny.
— Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
If you want to learn how to write, read Rebecca West. Nobody comes close to what she can do to words.
If you're new to West's words, start yourself off with her description of facism: "drunkenness without laughter".
Expand on her politics with her wider critique of capitalism: "Capitalism has grooved society with a number of deep slots along which human beings can roll to a fixed destination. When a man takes charge of a factory the factory takes charge of him."
And top it off with West's definition of feminism: "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."