Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

The line urges radical artistic and personal integrity: do not contort your inner life to fit prevailing tastes, rational systems, or the expectations of an audience. “Don’t bend” and “don’t water it down” reject compromise; “don’t try to make it logical” suggests that the deepest truths may be nonrational, dreamlike, or emotionally driven. The culminating imperative—pursue “intense obsessions mercilessly”—frames obsession not as pathology but as the engine of authentic creation. Read in a Kafkaesque key, it champions fidelity to the strange, private pressures that shape one’s work, even when they produce unsettling or unpopular results.