And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't. Jennifer Donnelly
About This Quote

If you have children, you can't write. If you have a husband/wife, you can't write. And even if you have a full house of children, you can't write. You just can't do it.

You just don't have the time, the energy or the peace of mind to sit down and write. But Emily Dickinson? She wrote all of her poems on scraps of paper she found in her pockets, in the pockets of her dresses, even in her bedcovers. She wrote her poems on napkins at parties.

She didn't have any children, no husband to take care of the house or another person to take care of the kids while she was writing. She was alone with herself and she had time to write her poems day after day after day. It's hard to imagine that someone could be that focused for that long on writing poetry, but one thing is for sure: Emily Dickinson had no interest in being lonely.

Source: A Northern Light

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