I'm not a writer. I know a lot of writers; I know a handful of really excellent, great ones, and I know what they're like. They are in love with language. They're obsessed with it. Even if their thoughts aren't more special than anybody else's, they have a way of putting them into words that makes them sensational.
you don't know what you think unless you say it.
Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
I am never as clear about any matter as when I have finished writing about it.
The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.
The way you write affects what you say.
If writing has taught me anything, it's that you don't actually understand anything until you can express it in words.
A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words.
It is extremely natural for us to desire to see such our thoughts put into the dress of words, without which indeed we can scarce have a clear and distinct idea of them our selves.
I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the needs of the day, the non-writing day. But it seems to me I seldom purely think ... if I thought more I might write less.
I have always wanted to write in such a way that will make people think, Why, I've always thought that but never found the words for it.
When we write we begin to taste the texture of our own mind
Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.
I can understand that there are those who can think and imagine the world without words, but I think that once you find the words that name your experience, then suddenly that experience becomes grounded, and you can use it and you can try to understand it.
We're talking about the struggle to drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of grammar, syntax, human sense; every attempt means starting over with language. starting over with accuracy.
All I know is what I have words for.
I do not find it easy to articulate thoughts about religion. I remain the sort of person who turns off 'Thought for the Day' when it comes on the radio.
... writing had become an essential element of the process of thinking. Not until I had put my thoughts down on paper could I examine them with objectivity.
Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms.
It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.
Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.
The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her toungue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts -at any rate not the reverse.
How hard it is to make your thoughts look anything but imbecile fools when you paint them with ink on paper.
