“I did have an inkling that I was going to be a writer. That was my intention.”

On Writing Poetry (1995)
Context: My English teacher from 1955, run to ground by some documentary crew trying to explain my life, said that in her class I had showed no particular promise. This was true. Until the descent of the giant thumb, I showed no particular promise. I also showed no particular promise for some time afterwards, but I did not know this. A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately. If I had not been ignorant in this particular way, I would not have announced to an assortment of my high school female friends, in the cafeteria one brown-bag lunchtime, that I was going to be a writer. I said "writer," not "poet;" I did have some common sense. But my announcement was certainly a conversation-stopper. Sticks of celery were suspended in mid-crunch, peanut-butter sandwiches paused halfway between table and mouth; nobody said a word. One of those present reminded me of this incident recently — I had repressed it — and said she had been simply astounded. "Why?," I said. "Because I wanted to be a writer?" "No," she said. "Because you had the guts to say it out loud."

"An Uncommon Scold," by Abby Adams, 1989.

Hess' Diary

Page 238
2000s, (2008)

From Zoran Djindjic's speech held to students of Banja Luka University, 20.02.2003.

Source: Letters to Felice‎

Laura Furman, Rumours Exposed http://books.google.com/books?id=SW31aVVDc_AC (2003: Citadel Press), ISBN 9780806524726, p. 6

Quote from a late letter of Bazille he wrote in 1870, shortly before he died in the Franco-Prussian War; Bazille joined General de Barrail's staff
1866 - 1870
Source: Les Impressionists autour de Paris: tableau de banlieu avec peintres, ed. Jean-Michel Puydebat – SEM Chateau d’Auvers, 1993, p. 16