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"Happiness, he tells himself, teaches one nothing. Misery, on the other
hand, steels one for the future. Misery is a school for the soul. From the
waters of misery one emerges on the far bank purified, strong, ready to take
up again the challenges of a life of art.
Yet misery does not feel like a purifying bath. On the contrary, it feels
like a pool of dirty water."

"Normal people find it hard to be bad. Normal people, when they feel
badness flare up within them, drink, swear, commit violence. Badness is to
them like a fever: they want it out of their system, they want to go back to
being normal. But artists have to live with their fever, whatever its nature,
good or bad. The fever is what makes them artists; the fever must be kept
alive. "

"But he knows it is not so. Between black
and white there is a gulf fixed. Deeper than pity, deeper than honourable
dealings, deeper even than goodwill, lies an awareness on both sides that
people like Paul and himself, with their pianos and violins, are here on this
earth, the earth of South Africa, on the shakiest of pretexts."