It can be worthwhile having a writer for your father

From a biography of screenwriter Robert Bolt-he wrote Lawrence of Arabia, A Man for All Seasons (and the play on which it was based), Doctor Zhivago, and Ryan's Daughter. This is a letter he wrote to his daughter when she was 20 and had become a bit of a recluse.

Comments in [brackets and italics] for clarification.

I have been thinking of you and wondering what the future holds for you. I can't control the future but I do bear a certain responsibility for the past. Tom [Bolt's son] said, quite passionately, words to the effect that 'Don't withdraw your love from me.' I was brought to a halt because I had no idea that I was in danger of giving that impression. Matters were soon made up with Tom but then I began to realize how much pain I must have given you all those years back. Unbearable pain, I think. I slipped out of the door when you weren't looking. [Bolt had left her mother for another woman] I don't know what else I could have done, but I think I know what else a more courageous and quick witted person would have done. Forgive me. I must have given you the impression that pain comes from man, and even from such other circumstances as involve women, so that the only person you can hold on to must be yourself. You are a person that takes everything to their OWN heart, and you keep it there. If I am right, you carry around inside yourself a burden of consciousness of the world's pain. And in your heart you carry around a principal of unworthiness, which takes I think the form of actual physical pain. If I am wrong throw this letter in the waste basket. If I am one third right, think for a minute about it. Nobody has the right to shoulder so much pain.