“Don’t you want fame? It’s something that most artists haven’t been indifferent to.”
“Children. How can you care for the opinion of the crowd, when you don’t care twopence for the opinion of the individual?”
“We’re not all reasonable beings,” I laughed.
“Who makes fame? Critics, writers, stockbrokers, women.”
“Wouldn’t it give you a rather pleasing sensation to think of people you didn’t know and had never seen receiving emotions, subtle and passionate, from the work of your hands? Everyone likes power. I can’t imagine a more wonderful exercise of it than to move the souls of men to pity or terror.”
“Melodrama.”
“Why do you mind if you paint well or badly?”
“I don’t. I only want to paint what I see.”
“I wonder if I could write on a desert island, with the certainty that no eyes but mine would ever see what I had written.”
Strickland did not speak for a long time, but his eyes shone strangely, as though he saw something that kindled his soul to ecstasy.