Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright

For what is genius, I ask you, but the capacity to be obsessed? ...We have all been geniuses, you and I; but sooner or later it is beaten out of us, the glory faded, and by the age of seven most of us are nothing but wretched little adults.

Perhaps sound is only an insanity of silence, a mad gibber of empty space grown fearful of listening to itself and hearing nothing.

... now and again we would happen to step out of the familiar universe into a sudden sharp shock of sweetly scented air, sudden as spilled perfume, piercing as crystal, dark and sweet as the sound of oboes.

... it is the purpose of this history to trace not the mere outlines of a life but the inner plan, not the external markings but the secret soul.