We Never Believe We're Beautiful, No Matter

Every Page Was Once A Blank Page, Just As Every Word That Appears On It Now Was Not Always There, But Instead Reflects The Final Result Of Countless Large And Small Deliberations. All The Elements Of Good Writing Depend On The Writer's Skill In Choosing One Word Instead Of Another. And What Grabs And Keeps Our Interest Has Everything To Do With Those Choices.

But If I Were Asked To Pick One Constant, One Quality That Seems Dependable, Immutable, Endlessly Available, I'd Say That It Was Intensity. For Nothing In Sicily Seems Withheld, Done Half Way, Restrained Or Suppressed. There's Nothing To Correspond To Say, The Ironic, The Cerebral Remove At Which A Frenchman Might Consider An Idea Or A Question, Or The Scandinavian Distrust Of The Sloppy, Emotive Response.

If We Want To Write, It Makes Sense To Read—and To Read Like A Writer. If We Wanted To Grow Roses, We Would Want To Visit Rose Gardens And Try To See Them The Way That A Rose Gardener Would.

Too Often Students Are Being Taught To Read As If Literature Were Some Kind Of Ethics Class Or Civics Class—or Worse, Some Kind Of Self-help Manual. In Fact, The Important Thing Is The Way The Writer Uses The Language.

I’ve Always Found That The Better The Book I’m Reading, The Smarter I Feel, Or, At Least, The More Able I Am To Imagine That I Might, Someday, Become Smarter.