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Words of Wisdom

May 6, 2008 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 1 comment

I answered some questions for the school newspaper, since I (among others) am leaving next year for other ventures. They wanted to know if I had any words of wisdom. I thought about it, and here’s what I’ve got:

1) Never use the verb “is” in your writing.
2) Don’t fear ambiguity. Relish it.
3) When in doubt, the main character symbolizes Christ.

From Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can...to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.