望月怀远

海上生明月，天涯共此时。情人怨遥夜，竟夕起相思。
灭烛怜光满，披衣觉露滋。不堪盈手赠，还寝梦佳期。

~ 张九龄 (唐代)

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译文 (作者: 佚名):
茫茫的海上升起一轮明月，此时你我都在天涯共相望。
有情之人都怨恨月夜漫长，整夜里不眠而把亲人怀想。
熄灭蜡烛怜爱这满屋月光，我披衣徘徊深感夜露寒凉。
不能把美好的月色捧给你，只望能够与你相见在梦乡。

Contemporary Chinese translation (translator: unknown):
A bright moon was born on the sea, which we both could look at from different locations.
Lovers complain the long moon night, because they miss their loved one all night.
The moon light brightens the room without candles, I wander back and forth feeling the chilly air.
As I cannot bring you the beautiful moon light, so I hope that I will see you in my dreams.

My River

My river runs to thee.
Blue sea, wilt thou welcome me?
My river awaits reply.
Oh! sea, look graciously.

I’ll fetch thee brooks
from spotted nooks.
Say, sea, Take me!

~ Emily Dickinson

班扎古鲁白玛的沉默 - The Silence of Vadjra Guru Pema

你见，或者不见我，我就在那里，不悲不喜。
It’s doesn’t matter if you see me or not.  
I am standing right there, with no emotion.

你念，或者不念我，情就在那里，不来不去。  
It’s doesn’t matter if you miss me or not.  
The feeling is right there, and it isn’t going anywhere.

 你爱，或者不爱我，爱就在那里，不增不减。  
It’s doesn’t matter if you love me or not.  
Love is right there, it is not going to change.

你跟，或者不跟我，我的手就在你的手里，不舍不弃。  
It’s doesn’t matter if you are with me or not.  
My hand is in your hand, and I am not going to let go.

来我怀里，或者，让我住进你的心里  
Let me embrace you,  or  
Let me live in your heart entirely.

默然 相爱，寂静 喜欢。 
Silence Love, Calmness Joy.

~ 扎西拉姆·多多

The Night has a thousand eyes

The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the Day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

~ Francis William Bourdillon

Rudyard Kipling

http://www.biography.com/people/rudyard-kipling-9365581

The Anna Akhmatova File (1989) - English Subtitles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNonUUEdWyE

There is something odd about the human soul... Poems, even the greatest, fail to make the author happy. Pushkin knew. He was the author of "The Bronze Horseman". Yet, he wasn't happy. But we can say with confidence that more than anything else Pushkin wanted to write more.
~ Anna Akhmatova

«Why I write» by George Orwell 1946

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think that there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

1) Sheer egoism.
    ... The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition—in many cases, in deed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all—and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
2) Aesthetic enthusiasm.
    ...
3) Historical impulse.
    Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
4) Political purpose—using the word "political" in the widest possible sense.
    ... Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

[my question: what about the writer's spiritual yarning or religious experience? Should this be #5?] 

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality.