Only With Winter-patience Can We

When One Is A Stranger To Oneself, Then One Is Estranged From Others, Too.

One Cannot Collect All The Beautiful Shells On The Beach. One Can Collect Only A Few, And They Are More Beautiful If They Are Few.

The Bearing, Rearing, Feeding And Educating Of Children; The Running Of A House With Its Thousand Details; Human Relationships With Their Myriad Pulls - Women's Normal Occupations In General Run Counter To Creative Life, Or Contemplative Life, Or Saintly Life.

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.

I Want A Singleness Of Eye, A Purity Of Intention, A Central Core To My Life That Will Enable Me To Carry Out These Obligations And Activities As Well As I Can.