What I Have Been Reading

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

For it is not physical solitude that actually separates one from other men, not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. 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.

The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.

The beach is not the place to work; to read, write or think… Too warm too damp, too soft for any real mental discipline or sharp flights of spirit… The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy or too impatient… Patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choice less as a beach– waiting for a gift from the sea.