Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/159

What terrifies me is exactly this: I am shoving off into a total reevaluation of everything, I am declaring to myself (because I believe it) that I must trust what my instincts tell me is good rather than what the world says is good. Our fear of the ridiculous is society’s polite way, its subtle way of telling us, that if we go beyond the ridiculous and cease to be afraid of it, the second price may be death. So, I feel as if I am about to embark on the second Freudian expedition into the unknown, and so far only one man, Freud, succeeded without paying for it in madness, death, or prison. But I feel optimistic. I feel that I can do it, and so I’m going to try. For the first time in my life I feel that I can be a great writer—I never really had that confidence before. I thought Naked was an imposture, and in a way it was—I was hiding behind it. But my real nature has been not to hide, but to go forward, and this I’m going to do.