"You ask if your poetry is any good. You ask me. You have asked others before me. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you get annoyed when certain editors decline your efforts. Now (since you have permitted me to give you advice), I beg you to give all that up. You see what is on the outside, and that, above all else, you must not do. Nobody can advise or help you, nobody.
There is only one solution. Enter into yourself. Explore the reason why you write; see if its roots reach down into the deepest place of your heart, ask yourself if you would die if you were forbidden to write. And above all: ask yourself, in the quietest hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself to find a deep answer. And if the answer is affirmative, when you can answer this serious question with a clear and simple ‘I must,’ then build your life around this necessity; your whole life, down to its meanest and most apathetic hour, must be a sign and certificate of this impulse."
Rainer Maria Rilke
(thanks to hc)
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