“Many #poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not #saints: they never succeed in being themselves...
They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other #poet, some other saint...
They wear out their minds & bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or #write somebody else's #poems.
―T Merton