I see things differently, I think of them differently.
I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before.
'A dream of form in days of thought'--who is it who says that?
I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me.
The merely visible presence of this lad--for he seems to me
little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty--
his merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can you realize
all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me
the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it
all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection
of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body--
how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two,
and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that
is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me!
You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered
me such a huge price but which I would not part with?
It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why
is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat
beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me,
and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain
woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always
missed."

"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."

Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden.
After some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray
is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him.
I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than
when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said,