Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.
From Russell Banks
I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.
Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing.
But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.
It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check.
But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down.
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