Maddenation

Why We Write

This is a sort of followup to the Practice Writing entry by Dad, but I wanted to get the quote in with the Quotes category. It’s from Helen Keller, and I found it in an interesting New Yorker article. By the way, the article is also very good, with interesting meditations on language and learning and meaning and imagination. I fully expect it to show up in Best American Essays 2004.

It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind… . It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, where we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies.

Patrick • Quotes/Recommendations • 06/12/03 • 0 comments

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