May I not be forgiven for thinking it is a wonderful testimony to my being made for art, that when in the midst of this trouble and pain I sit down to my book, some beneficent power shows it all to me and tempts me to be interested, and I don’t invent it — really do not — but see it and write it down?

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) English writer and social critic

Letter to biographer, John Forster

in J. F. Nisbet, The Insanity of Genius, ch. 10 (1893)