“True artists are possessed…they are messianic egomaniacs. They believe that what they do is unspeakably important: it is only that conviction that makes the writer important…So Beethoven does draft after draft of his works, scrutinizing, altering, improvising them long after anyone commonly sane would have stopped, delighted…only the absolute conviction that with patience enough he [or she] can find his [or her] way through or around any obstacle—only the certainty solid as life that he [or she] can sooner or later discover the right technique—can get the true artist through the endless hours of fiddling, reconceiving, throwing out in disgust…If he [or she] does his work well, the ego that made it possible does not show in the work…He [or She] builds whatever world he [or she] is able to build, then evaporates into thin air, leaving what he [or she]’s built to get by on its own.”

– From “…the afterword he [Gardner] wrote for a collection of critical articles on his work…published in 1982…” (for more info about this collection, click here), as quoted by Charles Johnson in his Introduction to Gardner’s novel The Sunlight Dialogues.  

Also note Gardner’s subtle reference to Shakespeare (whose works, according to Wikipedia, were a constant presence in Gardner’s childhood years, due to his parents’ love of those works…), and indeed to Prospero, in his last sentence – thus adding an extra dimension of magic…