Yay, I have the book, here's the whole scene...

From "Illusions", by Richard Bach, pages 95-96:

"Tell me why I quit my job...do you know why I quit the Messiah job?"
"Crowds, you said. Everybody wanting you do do their miracles for them."
"Yeah. Not the first, the second. Crowdophobia is your cross, not mine. It's not crowds that wear me, it's the kind of crowd that doesn't care at all about what I came to say. You can walk New York to London on the ocean, you can pull gold coins out of forever and still not make them care, you know?"
When he said that, he looked lonelier than I had ever seen a man still alive. He didn't need food or shelter or money or fame. He was dying of his need to say what he knew, and nobody cared enough to listen.
I frowned at him, so as not to cry.
"Well, you asked for it," I said. "If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem."
He jerked his head up and his eyes blazed as though I had hit him with the wrench. I thought all at once that I would not be wise to get this guy mad at me. A man fries quick, struck by lightening.
Then he smiled that half-second smile.
"You know what, Richard?" he said slowly. "You...are...right!"
He was quiet again, tranced, almost, by what I had said. Not noticing, I went on talking to him for hours about how we had met and what there was to learn, all these ideas firing through my head like morning comets and daylight meteors. He lay very still in the grass, not moving, not saying a word. By noon I finished my version of the universe and all things that dwelled therein.


I love this book. All of you read it. Now.