When Einstein was stymied while working out General Relativity, he would pull out his violin and plan Mozart until he could reconnect to what he called the harmony of the spheres.
-       Walter Isaacson, The Innovators

Masters have a sense of how everything interacts organically, and they can intuit patterns or solutions in an instant. This fluid form of thinking does not occur through a step-by-step process, but rather comes in flashes and insights as the brain makes sudden connections between the disparate forms of knowledge, causing us to sense the dynamic in real time. . . If Albert Einstein could not begin to reconstruct the steps in retrospect that led to his insight on the relativity of time, then why should it be imagined that such steps exist? We must trust the experience and descriptions of these Masters, all people with high levels of self-awareness and analytical skills.
-       Robert Greene, Mastery