Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.
Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.
And the process of reading is such a private one. I once came into a room where a friend of mine was reading one of my books, and he clicked his tongue impatiently and shooed me off.
It is exciting to write about the present once one gets beyond the trivia of the moment. As a time to live in, as a time to think about, the present is intriguing.
I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I’m enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.
Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.
Those books of mine that are remunerative – I’m not talking about poetry here – take years to write, and I am never sure they’ll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.
