A young woman recounts three times in her life when she felt emotions of an unexplainable transcendent love: watching a ballet for the first time, making eye contact with an attractive librarian in high school, and listening to an old professor lecture during night classes at a university.

Searching for a muse to inspire a novel he is attempting to write, an author in San Francisco finds his passions ignited by something much more sinister.

A man who is trying to find his place in the world tries his hand at multiple professions but ultimately settles with painting. Though he has talent as a painter, he leaves his patrons unsatisfied, taking wild artistic liberties he takes with commissions—a lesson which his two closest friends will come to learn when he paints a portrait of one of them.

A creative writing teacher sits through a conference with one his favorite students. He takes us on a journey through the characters in the story, and in his life.

An accomplished, married man becomes enamored with another woman after she sings in a concert. He dreams of throwing away his current marriage and life to pursue a relationship with this woman.

A writer wakes up every day hoping each day would be the day he finally manages to write, though each day he finds new reasons to delay his writing.

Stinging from his recently cut-off engagement, a young man retreats to a small town in the mountains of Virginia to work as city editor of the local newspaper. Alternately entranced and disgusted with his hermit-like nocturnal life, he finds peace and pleasure listening to the St. Anthony Chorale.

A dancer becomes disillusioned after moving to Tel Aviv to study under a long admired choreographer. Once she begins to see an actor's face at pivotal points in her life, she decides to quit the dance company and leave Tel Aviv.

A man walks with a writer around London who tells him about the novel he wrote that was lost which can never be matched in beauty by any other.

A lovestruck journalist and a torn painter pull the threads of their affair in opposite directions: he desires something more permanent, while she feels indebted to her husband and sons.