[Rosemarie Beck Journal entry]
Jan 8 [1956]
If I am to grow it is only by rigorously laying siege to anything I might fall in love with as I paint which is not directly in the line of battle. Drive to the front even if my advance guard is only a whisper. It is the whisper then.
Falling off, thank god, at last are some of the worthless preoccupations which engage us women and divide us in our work and singleness: How I look, who I am, whether I am charming, witty, brilliant. To give all that nonsense up, get the devil of personal pride and vanity behind me, will yield me what little intelligence and energy (powerful little) for the work.

N. once said to me that women being more naturally sensitive and gifted than men, have the battle of overcoming that before they can begin to paint. To paint? - meaning to paint like a man. Ah, but that is where they would be weak! If they renounced their machinery and let in its place what they can only assume but never really possess then indeed they have nothing. To imitate so called male energy, idea, intellect, is to possess a bag of wind.