It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.
Louise GlückSo you couldn't protect yourself? The absolute erodes; the boundary, the wall around the self erodes. If I was waiting I had been invaded by time. But do you think you're free? I think I recognize the patterns of my nature. Bud do you think you're free? I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added.
Louise GlückTonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's voice couldn't make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can't love another human being you have no place in the world.
Louise Glück