My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.

A woman is subject matter enough.

The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.

I like dark subject matter. I'm not sure what that means about me!

It's very hard to deal with true subject matter, especially when you're writing about such weighty issues.

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a by-product, something the reader himself is led to formulate after watching the story unfold. The ideas, the generalizations, ought to be implicit in the selection and arrangement of the people and places and actions. They ought to haunt a piece of fiction as a ghost flits past an attic window after dark.