“I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.”

— Jenny Joseph

The Observer, 19 April, 1998, p. 23

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Jenny Joseph 3

Poet 1932–2018

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Context: One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't see people, or go for a walk in the forest. All I had was my head and my books, and I thought a lot. I learned, because there was no interruption. I had access to myself, to my thinking. I wouldn't say that I particularly matured. The thinking was physics thinking. I was just short of twenty-two then.
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