I Have Begun To Listen

Among The Letters My Readers Write Me, There Is A Certain Category Which Is Continuously Growing, And Which I See As A Symptom Of The Increasing Intellectualization Of The Relationship Between Readers And Literature.

If A Bell Failed To Ring, If A Stove Smoked, If A Wheel On A Machine Stuck, You Knew At Once Where To Look And Did So With Alacrity; You Found The Defect And Knew How To Cure It. But The Thing Within You, The Secret Mainspring That Alone Gave Meaning To Life, The Thing Within Us That Alone Is Living, Alone Is Capable Of Feeling Pleasure And Pain, Of Craving Happiness And Experiencing It- That Was Unknown. You Knew Nothing About That, Nothing At All, And If The Mainspring Failed There Was No Cure. Wasn't It Insane?

When Two Cultures Collide Is The Only Time When True Suffering Exists.

At One Time I Had Given Much Thought To Why Men Were So Very Rarely Capable Of Living For An Ideal. Now I Saw That Many, No, All Men Were Capable Of Dying For One.

The True Profession Of A Man Is To Find His Way To Himself.