This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.    – James Baldwin

I find that if I don’t give shape to my experience in language, if I don’t spend time in the crafting and honing of that experience in words, I don’t feel real to myself. It’s as if the layer of experience which completes myself is the act of writing, the act of naming what I’ve known.  – Mark Doty

I write because it’s the way I take long walks./ I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness./I write with a knife, carving each word from the generosity of trees….   – Terry Tempest Williams