“It is clear to see that it is not them but me, who had lost my self-identity. As I hide behind these books I read, while scribbling my poetry, like art could save a wretch like me, with some ideal ideology that no one can hope to achieve. And I am never real; it is just a sketch of me. And everything I have made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint, of tape, of time”

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: Ik heb verleden jaar een beetje te veel van mijn krachten gevergd, ik kan dat niet volhouden, het was mij niet mogelijk, ik moest weder terug, ik heb niets zitten maken als steenen [over zijn schilderijen?].. .Zij hebben van mij mooie schilderijen willen zien en ik heb ze nog niet kunnen maken, de eene illusie verdwijnt voor de andere, ik heb de koude werkelijkheid gemaakt, en ik heb de Waarheid gemaakt. Is er een waarheid, de koude werkelijkheid is ook een waarheid. Wat daartusschen ligt was baroque conventie. Ik heb alles in de kachel gestopt.. ..ik zit er mijn tijd op te verknoeien; wat materieel is, is voor mij geen kunst. Ik heb die er niet uit kunnen brengen.
in a letter to E. Goossens van Eijndhoven, c. 1886, published in Onze Kunst, 1918, p. 136; as cited in 'Matthijs Maris' in Palet serie; een reeks monografieën over Hollandsche en Vlaamsche schilders https://archive.org/details/paletserieeenree4amstuoft, dr. H. E. v. Gelder; H. J. W. Becht, Amsterdam, pp. 13-14
Matthijs was that year painting his famous work 'The Bride, or Novice taking the Veil / De Kerkbruid' https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Matthijs_Maris#/media/File:Matthijs_Maris_The_Bride,_or_Novice_taking_the_Veil,_c_1887.jpg

The Hindu, "The Shashi Tharoor column: A departure, fictionally", Sunday, September 16, 2001 Available Online http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/09/16/stories/13160675.htm
2000s

Source: The Path to Rome (1902), p. 201

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

"Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Context: An experiment about your next vacation will allow you to observe your attitude to your experiencing self: At the end of the vacation, all pictures and videos will be destroyed. Furthermore, you will swallow a potion that will wipe out all your memories of the vacation. How would this affect your vacation plans? How much would you be willing to pay for it, relative to a normally memorable vacation? My impression is that the elimination of memories greatly reduces the value of the experience.Imagine a painful operation during which you will scream in pain and beg the surgeon to stop. However, you are promised an amnesia-inducing drug that will wipe out any memory of the episode. Here again, my observation is that most people are remarkably indifferent to the pains of their experiencing self. Some say they don’t care at all. Others share my feeling, which is that I feel pity for my suffering self but not more than I would feel for a stranger in pain.I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

As quoted in 'From my rotting body, flowers shall grow, and I am in them, and that is eternity', Potter P. Emerg Infect Dis, 2011
after 1930

Variant: Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
Source: Olney Hymns (1779), Amazing Grace

1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Speech to the House of Lords http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108314 rejecting the Maastricht Treaty (7 June 1993)
Post-Prime Ministerial