You Can’t Just Write And Write And

In General, I Feel, Or I Have Come To Feel, That The Richest Writing Comes Not From The People Who Dedicate Themselves To Writing Alone. I Know This Is Contradicted Again And Again But I Continue To Feel It. They Don't, Of Course, Write As Much, Or As Fast, But I Think It Is Riper And More Satisfying When It Does Come. One Of The Difficulties Of Writing Or Doing Any Kind Of Creative Work In America Seems To Me To Be That We Put Such Stress On Production And Material Results. We Put A Time Pressure And A Mass Pressure On Creative Work Which Are Meaningless And Infantile In That Field.

When One Is A Stranger To Oneself, Then One Is Estranged From Others, Too. If One Is Out Of Touch With Oneself, Then One Cannot Touch Others. Only When One Is Connected To One's Own Core, Is One Connected To Others. And For Me, The Core, The Inner Spring, Can Best Be Re-found Through Silence.

We Americans, With Our Terrific Emphasis On Youth, Action, And Material Success, Certainly Tend To Belittle The Afternoon Of Life And Even To Pretend It Never Comes. We Push The Clock Back And Try To Prolong The Morning, Over-reaching And Over-straining Ourselves In The Unnatural Effort. ... In Our Breathless Attempts We Often Miss The Flowering That Waits For Afternoon.

Perhaps Both Men And Women In America May Hunger, In Our Material, Outward, Active, Masculine Culture, For The Supposedly Feminine Qualities Of Heart, Mind And Spirit — Qualities Which Are Actually Neither Masculine Nor Feminine, But Simply Human Qualities That Have Been Neglected.

Life Is A Gift, Given In Trust - Like A Child.