Rereading more David Mitchell. Of course I've got an obsessive personality, but that's anything but news. One day I'll meet him somewhere, I know it. From Cloud Atlas:

"How vulgar this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards would be at one's throat all the sooner."