Crawling around with Rainer Maria Rilke this weekend - he fits my mood of late... Everything below is his from various writings. Indentation and text color brought to you by the vagaries of cut-and-paste.

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The only question is whether I will manage to keep out all intrusions and stay as quiet and undiscovered as I have been accustomed to being elsewhere.

Your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes, far in the distance.

Therefore, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you.

What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside of yourself and meet no one for hours -- that is what you must be able to attain.

If there is nothing you can share with other people, try to be close to Things. Things will not abandon you. The nights are still there, and the winds that move through the trees and across many lands. Everything in the world of Things and animals is filled with being, of which you are part.

I beg all those who love me to love my solitude too, for otherwise I would have to conceal myself even from their eyes and hands, like a wild animal hiding from enemies bent on its capture.

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