In the twenty-first century I do not send a letter because I want to tell you something. I do it because I want to give you something, something personal and long-lasting. There’s a reason why we always envision a cache of letters tied up with a ribbon. It’s because they are a gift.

A letter is a particularly delightful form of personal writing, but it is also a form of writing that has been cannibalized, chloroformed, and KO’d by new methods of communication.

Writing can allow you to write a different ending to your life.”

Perhaps one reason Anne was able to be so open was that, from the beginning, she thought of her writing as a conversation with a friend, a friend who understood, who listened, who would never pass judgment. Kitty, she called her, but of course she was Anne’s other self, perhaps even, she imagined, a more insightful or accepting self.

in an age when we can pass along information with the push of the send button, a letter, especially a handwritten letter, becomes something different. It is something uncommon, something that arrives and makes its recipient feel special. It may even become an artifact.

everyone has a voice.

Writing can lead to reflection, reflection can lead to understanding, understanding can lead to happiness.

It is humbling to see how much crossing out Dickens did, how much rewriting and cutting.

Anne’s diary is also instructive about how writing, for anyone, for everyone, for you and for me, can normalize the abnormal and feed the spirit, whether during exceptional moments of history or just ordinary moments of everyday life.