Dickens on Guston’s wall

“I hold my inventive capacity on the stern condition that it must master my whole life, often have complete possession of me, make its own demands on me, and sometimes for months together put everything else away from me… Whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself up to it and to find his recompense.”

Quote from Dickens on Painter Philip Guston’s wall - in last decade of his life.

In 1999 Guston’s dealer couldn’t source the quote (the web still infant). Nine years later Google has indexed it. The world has changed.