Living

The reader must retain a head clear enough to realize that Rilke's inwarding of life depends entirely upon a detachment from it. It is not "living" life he asks for but its contemplation. "Living" paradoxically requires ignoring things, forgetting things, enshrining partiality, obeying interest, changing your situation, not simply observing it change; living is wanting; living is willful, heedless, fearful; living absorbs life; living feeds; living excretes; living is as brutal and indifferent as chewing teeth.

William Gass, Reading Rilke