Patrick White (1912-1990), Nobel Prize in Literature (1973), on his contradictory, alternating personalities, evident in his writing, but hidden from him.

“I chose fiction, or more likely it was chosen for me, as the means of introducing to a disbelieving audience the cast of contradictory characters of which I am composed” (1, p. 20).

“I see myself not so much a homosexual as a mind possessed by the spirit of man or woman according to actual situations or the characters I become in my writing” (1, p. 80-81).

“I never re-read my books once I have corrected the proof, but if for some specific reason I have to open one and glance at a paragraph or two, I am struck by an element which must have got into them while I was under hypnosis. On one level certainly, there is a recognisable collage of personal experience, on another, little of the self I know. This unknown is the man the interviewers, the visiting professors, the thesis writers expect to find, and because I am unable to produce him I have given up receiving them” (1, p. 182).

1. Patrick White. Flaws in the Glass: A Self-portrait. Penguin Books, 1981.