Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.

When you start with a portrait and try to find pure form by abstracting more and more, you must end up with an egg.

True elegance becomes the more so as it approaches simplicity.

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.

If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.

And for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.