“Sibelius has an acutely developed sense of identification with nature and a preoccupation with myth that at one and the same time define his unique strength and his basic limitation. These preoccupations override his involvement in the human predicament, except in so far as it affects man’s relationship with nature.”

Source: The Strength To Dream (1961), p. 197
Context: No artist can develop without increasing his self-knowledge; but self-knowledge supposes a certain preoccupation with the meaning of human life and the destiny of man. A definite set of beliefs — Methodist Christianity, for example — may only be a hindrance to development; but it is not more so than Beckett's refusal to think at all. Shaw says somewhere that all intelligent men must be preoccupied with either religion, politics, or sex. (He seems to attribute T. E. Lawrence's tragedy to his refusal to come to grips with any of them.) It is hard to see how an artist could hope to achieve any degree of self-knowledge without being deeply concerned with at least one of the three.

Source: The One Thing You Need to Know (2005), p. 59

In fact, getting the story became the story. His writing could be classified as metajournalism, journalism about the process of journalism.
Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 5, Observer, p. 73

common statement in 'The New York Times', 8 July 1945
1940's

Quote from Rothko's 1958 lecture at the Pratt Institute; as cited in Mark Rothko, a biography, James E. B. Breslin, University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 28
1950's

Fiasco (1986), Ch. 3, tr. Michael Kandel (1987)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 403.

With the century, vol. 4