Ladies and Gentlemen: There are five hundred
reasons why I began to write for children, but to
save time I will mention only ten of them. Number 1)
Children read books, not reviews. They don’t give a
hoot about the critics. Number 2) Children don’t read
to find their identity. Number 3) They don’t read to
free themselves of guilt, to quench the thirst for
rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. Number 4) They
have no use for psychology. Number 5) They detest
sociology. Number 6) They don’t try to understand
Kafka or Finnegans Wake. Number 7) They still
believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches,
goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such
obsolete stuff. Number 8) They love interesting
stories, not commentary, guides, or footnotes.
Number 9) When a book is boring, they yawn
openly, without any shame or fear of authority.
Number 10) They don’t expect their beloved writer to
redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know
that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such
childish illusions.

St. John of the Cross: “It makes no difference whether a bird is tied down by a heavy rope or by the slenderest of cords, it can’t fly in either case.”

The things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind. Instead there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create.

Isaiah 65:17-18

If you have something to hide and if you are afraid of the truth, then this is the terrible, inescapable truth of truth. It will come to light, just as reality will emerge from the ashes of the illusion that tried to evade the truth. This is true not only of deeds done. It is also true of a truth repressed in our minds and memories. A feeling that is too painful to face, a mistake too hurtful to admit, an insight too transformative to welcome.

Until we come into the open and let the truth expand in the light, we will be hounded, and we will be on the run.

– Laurence Freeman

as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write

Isaiah 43: 18-19
Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
See, I am doing something new!

Ben Ratliff on John Coltrane:
His Stockholm solos are long and searching, making surging blues figures out of split-tones, turning what were once harmonic convolutions into a sensuous new way of phrase-smearing. It
sounded, absolutely, like a new way of speaking an established language. (Not long before this, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter reported, Coltrane had mentioned — apparently in earnest — that he wanted to learn how to speak English backward.)

This is what you shall do: Love the
earth and sun and the animals, despise
riches, give alms to every one that
asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the
people, take off your hat to nothing
known or unknown or to any man or number
of men, go freely with powerful
uneducated persons and with the young
and with the mothers of families, read
these leaves in the open air every
season of every year of your life,
reexamine all you have been told at school
or church or in any book, dismiss
whatever insults your own soul, and your
very flesh shall be a great poem and
have the richest fluency not only in its
words but in the silent lines of its
lips and face and between the lashes of
your eyes and in every motion and joint
of your body. . . .

When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God. For now I know that the Creation, which at first seems to reveal Him in concepts, then seems to hide Him by the same concepts, finally is revealed in Him, by the Holy Spirit. And we who are in God find ourselves united in Him with all that springs from Him. This is prayer, and this is glory!

March 17, 1952, Thomas Merton journal entry

You led me into the trackless woods,
My falling stars, my dark endeavor.
You were bitterness, lies, a bill of goods.
You weren’t a consolation—ever.