"I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and colour and solitude, of course I see visions. Anyone would."
"But you don't believe in them?" Doc asked hopefully.
"I don't find it a matter for belief or disbelief," the seer said. "You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it? Don't you see visions?"
"No," said Doc.
"From music, don't forms of wishes and forms of memory take shape?"
"That's different," said Doc.
"I don't see any difference," said the seer.

John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday (William Heinemann Ltd: 1954) pp. 65-66