The following is used by Christopher Hitchens to introduce his book,
Why Orwell Matters. It's rather amusing seeing as Proust was a genius himself.
Men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially or even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.
-- Marcel Proust,
Within a Budding Grove.
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