Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. – Samuel Johnson, “Recalling the Advice of a College Tutor,” Boswell, Life of John

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