on writing - mary gaitskill

Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely
alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of
thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like
a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the
wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just
words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page
and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will
re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.

- Mary Gaitskill