writing

Perhaps this is because music trades in mystery, while conversation trades in opinion — that subterranean species of certainty.

nothing is ever useless, and certainly is never lost.

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believ... See more

Imagination, however, is something else entirely. It is not just the ability to make something new, but the capacity to hold together what is not yet fully known, to maintain contact with ambiguity and to construct meaning in the absence of certainty. It enables the projection of possibilities that cannot yet be tested, modeled or verified.

To put it simply, ethos is about the writer, pathos is about the reader, and logos is the shared fabric between them. This speaks to the tradition of literature as communication, as a bridge between writers and readers across space and time.

Only once I found the independent drive to write essays did I discover the limits of my craft, the challenges of editing, and the flimsiness of my beliefs.

My beginnings are not beginnings; I just start. Sometimes I have to write the beginning after the book is done. Well, that seems like a natural thing, but many people don't go forward because the beginning isn't right; they just leave it until they get it right. I write what's there, what I know is there. If I have to rewrite it or change it, I'm n... See more

I was writing for some clear, single person—I would say myself, because I was quite content to be the only reader. I thought that everything that needed to be written had been written: there was so much. I am not being facetious when I say I wrote it in order to read it. And I think that is what makes the difference, because I could look at it as a... See more