“Looking back at my whole life, I see a chain consisting sometimes of natural events, and sometimes of accidents, strange, happy and unhappy circumstances, mistakes, stagnation, blunders, foppishness, lost time, frivolity, but at the same time this chain consists of days and hours of painstaking work, of disappointments, dissatisfaction and even despair, and at the same time of hidden faith in one’s strengths, love for one’s art, searches, sometimes blindly, by touch, and sometimes clear and purposeful, moving finally, into insight, into creative joy, into the satisfaction of the artist! So, my creative life completely consists of all this. I want to talk about all this truthfully and frankly in my book. It seems to me that only a book written from the bottom of my heart is needed or at least has the right to exist.” Igor Ilyinsky