“My life will be the best illustration of all my work.”

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Age for Love
Context: I scribbled four pages which would have been no disgrace to the Journal des Goncourts, that exquisite manual of the perfect reporter. It was all there, my journey, my arrival at the chateau, a sketch of the quaint eighteenth century building, with its fringe of trees and its well-kept walks, the master's room, the master himself and his conversation; the tea at the end and the smile of the old novelist in the midst of a circle of admirers, old and young. It lacked only a few closing lines. "I will add these in the morning," I thought, and went to bed with a feeling of duty performed, such is the nature of a writer. Under the form of an interview I had done, and I knew it, the best work of my life.
What happens while we sleep? Is there, unknown to us, a secret and irresistible ferment of ideas while our senses are closed to the impressions of the outside world? Certain it is that on awakening I am apt to find myself in a state of mind very different from that in which I went to sleep. I had not been awake ten minutes before the image of Pierre Fauchery came up before me, and at the same time the thought that I had taken a base advantage of the kindness of his reception of me became quite unbearable. I felt a passionate longing to see him again, to ask his pardon for my deception. I wished to tell him who I was, with what purpose I had gone to him and that I regretted it. But there was no need of a confession. It would be enough to destroy the pages I had written the night before. With this idea I arose. Before tearing them up, I reread them. And then — any writer will understand me — and then they seemed to me so brilliant that I did not tear them up. Fauchery is so intelligent, so generous, was the thought that crossed my mind. What is there in this interview, after all, to offend him? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Even if I should go to him again this very morning, tell him my story and that upon the success of my little inquiry my whole future as a journalist might depend? When he found that I had had five years of poverty and hard work without accomplishing anything, and that I had had to go onto a paper in order to earn the very bread I ate, he would pardon me, he would pity me and he would say, "Publish your interview." Yes, but what if he should forbid my publishing it? But no, he would not do that.

J’ai mis tout mon génie dans ma vie; je n’ai mis que mon talent dans mes œuvres.
Conversation with André Gide in Algiers, quoted in letter by Gide to his mother (30 January 1895); popularized by Gide and often subsequently quoted in Gide’s later work and in "Gide, André (1869-1951)" at Standing Ovations http://www.mr-oscar-wilde.de/about/g/gide.htm; the conversation was again recalled in Gide’s journal of (3 July 1913), quoted in “André Gide’s ‘Hommage à Oscar Wilde’ or ‘The Tale of Judas’”, Victoria Reid (University of Glasgow, UK), Chapter 5 in [Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe], edited by Stefano Evangelista (8 July 2010) part of a Continuum series The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe, ISBN 978-1-84706005-1, pp. 98–99 http://books.google.com/books?id=-oBmdCTSJ5IC&pg=PA98#v=onepage&q=%22I%20put%20all%20my%20genius%22, also footnote 6 (p. 99), quoting 1996 edition of Gide’s journal, pp. 746–47]

Song Shake Down The Stars

Letter of 1967 and 1970 to Prime Ministers Wilson and Heath declining knighthood.L. S. Lowry - A Biography by Shelley Rhode Lowry Press 1999 ISBN 9781902970011.
Other

He made a rare admission to a visiting musicologist when he was conducting his Third Symphony in Rome in 1934.
time.com http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,864759,00.html

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 69