Reading Was Like Eating Alone,

I Waited For Dawn, But Only Because I Had Forgotten How Hard Mornings Were. For A Second I'd Be Normal. Then Came The Dim Awareness Of Something Off, Out Of Place. Then The Truth Came Crashing Down And That Was It For The Rest Of The Day. Sunlight Was Reproof. Shouldn't I Feel Better Than I Had In The Dead Of Night.

But If I Were Asked To Pick One Constant, One Quality That Seems Dependable, Immutable, Endlessly Available, I'd Say That It Was Intensity. For Nothing In Sicily Seems Withheld, Done Half Way, Restrained Or Suppressed. There's Nothing To Correspond To Say, The Ironic, The Cerebral Remove At Which A Frenchman Might Consider An Idea Or A Question, Or The Scandinavian Distrust Of The Sloppy, Emotive Response.

With So Much Reading Ahead Of You, The Temptation Might Be To Speed Up. But In Fact It’s Essential To Slow Down And Read Every Word. Because One Important Thing That Can Be Learned By Reading Slowly Is The Seemingly Obvious But Oddly Underappreciated Fact That Language Is The Medium We Use In Much The Same Way A Composer Uses Notes, The Way A Painter Uses Paint. I Realize It May Seem Obvious, But It’s Surprising How Easily We Lose Sight Of The Fact That Words Are The Raw Material Out Of Which Literature Is Crafted.

Words Are The Raw Material Out Of Which Literature Is Crafted.

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.