Synergy du jour

"It seems that the more wonderful this painting becomes, the less chance there is of the Master ever surpassing it. The more perfect every succulent detail, the more devastating. He weeps over his painting. He looks like an old man, or, thinks Iris, like the old man he will soon become... The painting is making him old, for he is struggling, as if he'll never have courage again to try and love the world in oil and varnish, canvas and light."

--Gregory Maguire. From Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.

"Let Enoch Vand, chanting his imperious aphorisms in chapter 22, speak for the author of Trust in her twenties, and a little beyond:

To desire to be what one can be is purpose in life.
There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces.
Who squanders talent praises death.

I was never again so brave."

--Cynthia Ozick. Henry James, Tolstoy, and My First Novel. The American Scholar, Autumn 2004.