The ability to be alone is the ability to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those who can be alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another human being—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.
