"The nature of an artist "

Following is an extract from Ayn rand's " Atlas shrugged "

This is an excerpt from a conversation betwen Dagny Taggard , the heroine of the story , and Richard Halley , a great composer , who is now on strike .


" Miss Taggard , how many people are there to whom my work means as much as it does to you ?....That is the payment i demand . Not many can afford it . I don't mean your enjoyment , I don't mean your emotion - emotions be damned ! I mean your understanding and the fact that your enjoyment was of same nature as mine , that it came from the same source : from your intelligence , from the conscious judgement of a mind able to judge my work by the standard of the same values that went to write it-I mean , not the fact that you felt , but that you feel what i ished you to feel , not the fact that you admire my work , but that you admire it for the things i wished to be admired ........There' only one passion in most artists more voilent than their desire for admiration : their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do recieve . But it's a fear I've never shared . I do not fool myself about my work or the response I seek - I value both too highly . I do not care to be admired causelessly , emotionally , intutively , instinctively- or blndly . I do not care for blindness in any form , I have too much to show - or for defness , I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone's heart - only by someone's head . And when i find a customer with that invaluable capacity , then my performance is a mutual trade to mutual profit . An Artist is a trader , Miss Taggard , the hardest and most exacting of all traders........