Fact-checking Is So Boring Compared To Writing

Too Often Students Are Being Taught To Read As If Literature Were Some Kind Of Ethics Class Or Civics Class—or Worse, Some Kind Of Self-help Manual. In Fact, The Important Thing Is The Way The Writer Uses The Language.

To Be Truthful, Some Writers Stop You Dead In Your Tracks By Making You See Your Own Work In The Most Unflattering Light. Each Of Us Will Meet A Different Harbinger Of Personal Failure, Some Innocent Genius Chosen By Us For Reasons Having To Do With What We See As Our Own Inadequacies. The Only Remedy To This I Have Found Is To Read A Writer Whose Work Is Entirely Different From Another, Though Not Necessarily More Like Your Own—a Difference That Will Remind You Of How Many Rooms There Are In The House Of Art.

The Mystery Of Death, The Riddle Of How You Could Speak To Someone And See Them Every Day And Then Never Again, Was So Impossible To Fathom That Of Course We Kept Trying To Figure It Out, Even When We Were Unconscious.

We Never Believe We're Beautiful, No Matter How Many Times We Hear It. We Never Believe It Until Someone Says It In The Right Way.

Every Page Was Once A Blank Page, Just As Every Word That Appears On It Now Was Not Always There, But Instead Reflects The Final Result Of Countless Large And Small Deliberations. All The Elements Of Good Writing Depend On The Writer's Skill In Choosing One Word Instead Of Another. And What Grabs And Keeps Our Interest Has Everything To Do With Those Choices.