I have declared January to be my cleaning out month, starting in the basement with taking glass jars and cardboard boxes to recycling, getting rid of lawn chairs we never use, disposing of an old lumpy mattress and more. Then, one evening, I turned to a more interesting task—sorting through a box of letters and cards from the past several years. Among them I found quotes I’ve had on my desk at one time or another, mostly about writing. Any wise observation or directive for writing applies equally to living with awareness, I believe. So, whether or not you write, I offer these for your pondering in this new year.

Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it? Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as [her] first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. . . the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes [she] had never noticed. [She] writes it in spite of that. [She] finds ways to minimize the difficulty; [she] strengthens other virtues; [she] cantilevers the whole narrative out into thin air, and it holds. And if it can be done, then [she] can do it, and only [she]. For there is nothing in the material for this book that suggests to anyone but [her] alone its possibilities for meaning and feeling. ⁓ Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, p. 72

Every phrase was a testament. There was no time or reason for anything superfluous. Words must not be imprisoned or harnessed, not even in the silence of the page. And yet, it must be held tightly. If the violin is to sing, its strings must be stretched so tight as to risk breaking; slack, they are merely threads.

            To write is to plumb the unfathomable depths of being. Writing lies within the domain of mystery. The space between any two words is vaster than the distance between heaven and earth. To bridge it you must close your eyes and leap. A Hasidic tradition tells that in the Torah the white spaces, too, are God-given. Ultimately, to write is an act of faith. ⁓ Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, p. 321

Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours. ⁓ Jane Kenyon

 [Poetic beauty] is a composite of ruthlessness, arrogance, irony, carnal love, imagination and memory, of light and dark, and if we cannot achieve all of these together, our result will be impoverished, precarious, and scarcely alive. ⁓ Natalia Ginzburg

And one final quote which is not about writing. It comes from the October 2025 issue of Sojourner’s magazine, simply the title of an article, and something I remind myself of frequently.

Hope is not optimism; hope is defiance. ⁓ Marion Sarkisian Ramón Pareja

For a little levity at the end of all these ponderings—in the bottom of the box, under all the quotes, I found our passport pictures taken in 1971 before we traveled to Botswana. I had them on our refrigerator for awhile, but then they were deposited in the bottom of the box. Those were our plastic-perfection hair days. You have my full permission to laugh, even though we didn’t smile—I suppose we were told not to.