Lord Byron said, “If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” Some would argue that he went mad regardless, but everytime I read this I am reminded that writing is an unparalleled catharsis that helps lift the burden without leaving you empty. Anais Nin said, “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.” I’ll take that challenge.
A couple of other thoughts on writing/storytelling that I wanted to share:
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. – Hannah Arendt
Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. ~Henry David Thoreau
