"All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within; their source was a fatal compulsion.  What I wrote were things that assailed me from within myself.  I permitted the spirit that moved me to speak out.  I have never counted upon any strong response, any powerful resonance, to my writings.  They represent a compensation for our times, and I have been impelled to say what no one wants to hear.  For that reason, and especially at the beginning, I often felt utterly forlorn.  I knew that what I said would be unwelcome, for it is difficult for people of our times to accept the counterweight to the conscious world.  Today I can say that it is truly astonishing that I have had as much success as has been accorded me--far more than I ever could have expected.  I have the feeling that I have done all that it was possible for me to do.  Without a doubt that life work could have been larger, and could have been done better; but more was not within my power."

"A book of mine is always a matter of fate.  There is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course."

"My life has been in a sense the quintessence of what I have written, not the other way around.  The way I am and the way I write are a unity.  All my ideas and all my endeavors are myself.  Thus the 'autobiography' is merely the dot on the i."

"In Bollingen, silence surrounds me almost audibly, and I live 'in modest harmony with nature.'  Thoughts rise to the surface which reach back into the centuries, and accordingly anticipate a remote future.  Here the torment of creation is lessened; creativity and play are close together."

Carl Jung, who died on June 6, 1961, 50 years ago today. [See also this post and its links.]