"You want me to be thoroughly uncomfortable? Deprived of everything that makes life amusing?"
"Thoroughly uncomfortable. Deprived of everything that stands in the way of your genius."
She felt a sudden pang of jealousy, a hatred of her genius, this thing that had been tacked on to her. He cared for it and could be tender to it, but not to her.
"You're a cruel beast," she said, smiling through her pain.
"My cruelty and my beastliness are nothing to the beastliness and the cruelty of art. The Lord our God is a consuming fire. You must be prepared to be burnt."
"It's all very well for you, George. I don't like being burnt."
That roused him; it stirred the devil in him.
"Do you suppose I like it? Why, you—you don't know what burning is. It means standing by, on fire with thirst, and seeing other people drink themselves drunk."
"You don't want to be drunk, George. Any more than I do."
"I do not, thank God. But it would be all the same if I did. I can't get a single thing I do want."