It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright.
[Annie Dillard]

“At times of unhappiness, when my uselessness has become brutally apparent to me, and all musical language seems to be reduced to the result of patient experiment without anything behind the notes justifying all the effort, what then can one do but seek one’s true, forgotten face, somewhere in the forest, in the mountains, on the beach, in the midst of the birds? … The birds are the real artists. They are the true originators of my pieces.”