“I never had to choose my subject- my subject rather chose me.”

Source: Lisa Kaaki (2002-01-25). Wahbi Al-Hariri - the last of the classicists http://www.webcitation.org/6HcrXOzJ5. Arab News. Saudi Research & Publishing Company.

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, p. unknown : 'Notes from 1969'

Reaction to two Buddhist orders sympathising with communist rebels (1952), as quoted in Philip Short (2004) Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, page 84.

Essay as "Mr. X" (1969)
Context: The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights — I don't know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate.

Source: The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
Context: An ancient author tells us somewhere, with the tone of a pedagogue, if you have not done anything worthy of being recorded, at least write something worthy of being read. It is a precept as beautiful as a diamond of the first water cut in England, but it cannot be applied to me, because I have not written either a novel, or the life of an illustrious character. Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life. I have lived without dreaming that I should ever take a fancy to write the history of my life, and, for that very reason, my Memoirs may claim from the reader an interest and a sympathy which they would not have obtained, had I always entertained the design to write them in my old age, and, still more, to publish them.

Misattributed
Source: Hermann Weyl as quoted by Freeman Dyson: "Characteristic of Weyl was an aesthetic sense which dominated his thinking on all subjects. He once said to me, half-joking, 'My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.'" - Freeman Dyson, "Obituary of Hermann Weyl," Nature (1956-03-10), pp. 457-458.

Source: "Hot Docs 2017 Interview: Nanfu Wang on “I Am Another You”" in Roger Ebert https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/hot-docs-2017-interview-nanfu-wang-on-i-am-another-you (3 May 2017)

As quoted in "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/arts/design/18hartigan.html?_r=2