“This character out of my fantasy, whose author I became in the days of my partly literary, partly solitary or.. inward youth, has lived, apparently, since that faded time with a certain life — which his reticence, more than what he said, has persuaded a few readers to attribute to him.
Teste was conceived — in a room where Auguste Comte spent his early years — at a period when I was drunk on my own will and subject to strange excesses of consciousness of my self.
I was suffering from the acute ailment called precision. I tended toward the extreme of the reckless desire to understand, and I searched in myself for the critical points in my powers of attention.”

— Paul Valéry , book Monsieur Teste

Preface
Monsieur Teste (1919)

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Paul Valéry 89

French poet, essayist, and philosopher 1871–1945

Sheldon Kopp (1929–1999) American psychotherapist

Source: Even a stone can be a teacher (1985), p. 20

“They [his own fantasies he made in strange pencil drawings then] hover before me now in drifting color, more beautiful than I can possibly paint them.... I yearn for the day when I will have found my color harmonies, my harmonies.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

Quote of Nolde's letter, 1902, to Hans Fehr; as cited in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 35
During the next few years, Nolde virtually commuted between Copenhagen and Berlin; in the fishing village of Lildstand on Jutland's northern coast, he produced strange pencil drawings, as he wrote to Fehr
1900 - 1920

“I knew something was up when he couldn't go to his right. He said he was living his fantasy, and I said it was my fantasy to get his [rear] off the field.”

Tommy Lasorda (1927) American baseball player and coach

Obituary http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-barry-bremen-20110707,0,2935425.story, LA Times, 2011-07-07
Describing how he caught "Great Imposter" Barry Bremen in a Mets uniform shagging balls in the outfield before the 1986 All-Star Game at the Houston Astrodome.

“One evening I came to have a discussion with my father on the subject how long unbelievers are tormented in Hell. I maintained that no sinner could be so guilty that God would let him suffer longer than a thousand years. Father said that they would suffer for a thousand times a thousand years. We would not give up the argument. I became so irritated... I returned home to make my piece with him. He had gone to bed so I quietly opened his bedroom door. He was on his knees in front of the bed, praying... I closed the door and went to my own room but I could not get to sleep.... eventually I took out my drawing block and started to draw. I drew my father kneeling by his bed, with the light from the bedside lamp casting a yellow glow over his nightshirt. I fetched my paintbox and colored it in. Finally I achieved the right pictorial effect, and I was able to go to bed happy and slept soundly.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

after 1930
Source: 'Close Up of a Genius', Rolf E. Stenersen; Sem and Stenersen, Oslo 1946, pp. 10 – 11

“Stewart: Living. Living. Everyday living. At home, in the garden, around the house, with the kids, um, on vacation, and it has always been for me a very serious subject. But to persuade other people that it's a serious subject, not my readers, not my, not my followers, I don't want to call them followers, my friends, but to persuade…”

Martha Stewart (1941) American businesswoman, writer, television personality, and former fashion model

On Charlie Rose, 15 September 1995

“Tis now since I sat down before
That foolish fort, a heart,
(Time strangely spent) a year, and more,
And still I did my part:”

John Suckling (1609–1642) English poet

Tis Now, Since I Sat Down Before.
Other poems

“Summertime, 1950, I recognized Isherwood browsing in a Santa Monica bookstore. My book had just come out, so I grabbed a copy off the shelf, signed it and gave it to him. His face fell and my heart sank, but two days later he called and said, "Do you know what you've done?" I asked, "What?" And he simply told me to read his review in the Times. His rave turned my life around; the book immediately made the best-seller lists and has been in print ever since.
He was very kind in introducing me to various people he thought I should know, like Aldous Huxley, who had been my literary hero since Brave New World came out.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

On the chance meeting with Christopher Isherwood just after publication of The Martian Chronicles which led to fame and acclaim outside of SF fandom.
Playboy interview (1996)

“Distance in time has made my voice less contrived and subjective. I don’t feel I’m writing some kind of diary (which I kind of felt I was doing when I was 16). I am far more conscious of my voice and more disciplined in separating myself from my characters…”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

On how it has changed for her writing in a teenager’s voice in “Randa Abdel-Fattah: Identity and emotion” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/randa-abdel-fattah/ in The Writer (2018 Jan 18)

“No don't you know my daddy told me,
Told me right from the start
About youth.
He said no matter how old a man is,
He's partly a boy in his heart.
Yeah, and that's the truth.”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

You Can't Let the Boy Overpower) The Man in You (1964
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

“Result of self-consciousness: audience and actor are the same. I live my life as a spectacle for myself, for my own edification. I live my life but I don't live in it. The hoarding instinct in human relations.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

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Paul Valéry 89

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