[There is a pretense] that genius, making it, is arrived at by overnight experiment, histrionics, instead of endless years of solitary obstinacy.

--John Fowles, "The Ebony Tower"

* * *

What has twisted us around like this, so that
no matter what we do, we are in the posture
of someone going away?

--Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Eighth Elegy," trans. Stephen Mitchell