I find it ironic that Pearl uses the “he” pronoun in here being as she is talking about herself.
I feel this quote in my bones.
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (b. 6/26/1892 – d. 3/6/1973) was an American writer and novelist. She is best known for The Good Earth a bestselling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China” and for her “masterpieces”, two memoir-biographies of her missionary parents. She was the first American woman to win that prize.
Buck was born in West Virginia, but in October 1892, her parents took their 4-month-old baby to China. As the daughter of missionaries and later as a missionary herself, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang, with her parents, and in Nanjing, with her first husband. She and her parents spent their summers in a villa in Kuling, Mountain Lu, Jiujiang, and it was during this annual pilgrimage that the young girl decided to become a writer.
She graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, then returned to China. From 1914 to 1932, after marrying John Lossing Buck, she served as a Presbyterian missionary, but she came to doubt the need for foreign missions. Her views became controversial during the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy, leading to her resignation. After returning to the United States in 1935, she married the publisher Richard J. Walsh and continued writing prolifically. She became an activist and prominent advocate of the rights of women and racial equality, and wrote widely on Chinese and Asian cultures, becoming particularly well known for her efforts on behalf of Asian and mixed-race adoption. — wikipedia
Tao Talk 
Thank you for this, Lisa. I am so glad I read this book several years ago. Makes me want to re-read it!
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You’re welcome. I had to read it in high school and need to re-read it also. The quote is acutely resonant for me.
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I used to belong to the Book of the Month Club and started buying a bunch of classics because I went to French school and missed them all. I am glad this one was in there!
The quote is quite resonant for me, too.
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<3
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I read it decades ago, but now, it needs a re-visit. She was on the same level as Hemingway.
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I can believe it. She was blessed to have lived in another land for so many years and then bring back what she learned to effect positive change.
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I too feel that necessity to create, but I lack that acute sensitivity. (K)
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I remember that my father had her book ( don’t remember the title) in his collection. The name was fascinating for me. I don’t think I read it.
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Glad you familiar with it even if you haven’t read it. We had to read it in school, and I remember it as good, but I’m an adult now and need to read it through adult eyes.
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Yes, you’ve reminded me of it and I’ll look for it too.
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Yea I feel this quote clearly. If I’m not doing something creative I feel like I’m wasting time.
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Good way of putting it, Max.
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While creativity is a wonderful thing I oftentimes wish I had more of, I can also see how it can become a double-edged sword where the creative mind can start feeling empty when they don’t create.
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Insightful, Christian. The between times are just waiting to create again or acting as a receptor to gather data for future creations.
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Great quote, I think it was the pronoun of the day, every quote was he this or man is that, even if she wrote it as she a publisher would likely change it.
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I think you’re right.
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Fascinating! Thank you for sharing.
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Glad you enjoyed it. I just read what your blog is about and it sounds very interesting.
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