There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. – William Makepeace Thackeray

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. – Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, December 1957

The ablest writer is only a gardener first, and then a cook: his tasks are, carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts; and when they are ripe, to dress them, wholesomely, and yet so that they may have a relish. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers

The expression “to write something down” suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it. – William Gass, “Habitations of the Word,” Kenyon Review, October 1984