"I shall tell them this story against the background of the county I grew up in
and along the river I know and do not love very much.
For I have discovered that there are other rivers.
And this my boys will not know for a long time nor can they be told.
A great many never come to know that there are other rivers.
Perhaps that knowledge is saved for maturity and very few people
ever mature. It is enough if they flower and reseed. That is all that
nature requires of them.
But sometimes in a man or a woman awareness takes place — not
very often and always inexplainable. There are no words for it because
there is no one ever to tell. This is a secret not kept a secret,
but locked in wordlessness. The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt
to find symbols for the wordlessness. In utter loneliness a writer tries to
explain the inexplicable.
And sometimes if he is very fortunate and if the time is right, a very little
of what he is trying to do trickles through — not ever much.
And if he is a writer wise enough to know it can’t be done,
then he is not a writer at all. A good writer always works at the impossible.
There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind
as one lowers rifle sights.
And giving up the impossible he gives up writing."
(found in : brainpickings.org)
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