Berlioz on writing
Cute quote:
When I talk of my laziness, it only applies to the writing of prose. I have often sat up all night over my scores, and have spent eight hours at a time labouring at instrumentation, without once changing my position; but I have to fight with myself to begin to write a page of prose, and about the tenth line or so I get up, walk about the room, look out into the street, take up a book, and strive by any means to overcome the weariness and fatigue which instantly overpower me. I have to return to the charge eight or ten times before I can finish an article for the Journal des Débats, and it takes me quite two days to write one, even when I like the subject and am interested by it. And then, what erasures, and what scrawls! You should see my first draft!
—Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, Dover edition, p. 80
(Thanks, Lisa H!)