But My Silence Is Real. If I

The Journal Is Not Essentially A Confession, A Story About Oneself. It Is A Memorial. What Does The Writer Have To Remember? Himself, Who He Is When He Is Not Writing, When He Is Living His Daily Life, When He Is Alive And Real, And Not Dying And Without Truth.

To See Was Terrifying, And To Stop Seeing Tore Me Apart From My Forehead To My Throat.

As Reason Returned To Me, Memory Came With It, And I Saw That Even On The Worst Days, When I Thought I Was Utterly And Completely Miserable, I Was Nevertheless, And Nearly All The Time, Extremely Happy. That Gave Me Something To Think About. The Discovery Was Not A Pleasant One. It Seemed To Me That I Was Losing A Great Deal. I Asked Myself, Wasn't I Sad, Hadn't I Felt My Life Breaking Up? Yes, That Had Been True; But Each Minute, When I Stayed Without Moving In A Corner Of The Room, The Cool Of The Night And The Stability Of The Ground Made Me Breathe And Rest On Gladness.

Every Artist Is Linked To A Mistake With Which He Has A Particular Intimate Relation. There Is The Mistake Of Homer, Of Shakespeare — Which Is Perhaps, For Both, The Fact Of Not Existing. Every Art Draws Its Origin From An Exceptional Fault, Every Work Is The Implementation Of This Original Fault, From Which Come To Us A New Light And A Risky Conception Of Plenitude.

We Can Never Put Enough Distance Between Ourselves And What We Love. To Think That God Is, Is Still To Think Of Him As Present; This Is A Thought According To Our Measure, Destined Only To Console Us. It Is Much More Fitting To Think That God Is Not, Just As We Must Love Him Purely Enough That We Could Be Indifferent To The Fact That He Should Not Be. It Is For This Reason That The Atheist Is Closer To God Than The Believer.