"Trust in what is difficult."

Jocelyn Glei writes a post on The 99 Percent about one of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke. His book, Letters To A Young Poet, is easily in my top 3 favorite books on creativity. Glei notes the wisdom within Rilke's advice, including passages from the book about solitude, patience, and difficulty.

Read the article.

This past summer, I came across Letters on Life, which I found similarly enriching. Reasons to love Rilke? (As if you need them): He's brilliant, he valued correspondence, and he was great friends with Auguste Rodin.

This may be my all-time favorite quote:

"You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all- ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose."

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet.