Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story. - Iris Murdoch

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.

Human beings crave for novelty and welcome even wars. Who opens the morning papers without the wild hope of huge headlines announcing another great disaster? Provided of course that it affects other people and not oneself. Rupert liked order. But there is no man who likes order who does not give houseroom to a man who dreams of disorder. The sudden wrecking of the accustomed scenery, so long as one can be fairly sure of a ringside seat, stimulates the bloodstream. And the instinctive need to feel protected and superior ensures, for most of the catastrophes of mankind, the shedding by those not immediately involved of but the most crocodile of tears.