writing

This is why it’s very difficult to teach people how to write, because first you have to teach them how to care. Or, really, you have to show them how to channel their caring, because they already care a lot, but they don’t know how to turn that into words, or they don’t see why they should.

Instead, we rob students of their reason for writing by... See more

it’s not the being that matters, but the doing. Instead of being a writer, I just wrote. Instead of being a filmmaker, I made a movie.

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... See more

this is why i reject the liberal notion of writing as a mere act of self-expression. thats the language of a depoliticized art, the language of people who have the privilege of believing their words exist in a vacuum. but words are weapons, and i refuse to wield them lightly.

Some people think that writing is merely the process of picking the right words and putting them in the right order, like stringing beads onto a necklace. But the power of those words, if there is any, doesn’t live inside the words themselves. On its own, “Love the questions” is nearly meaningless. Those words only come alive when they’re embedded... See more