For Young Writers

Learning to read is like watching the sun come up and drive
away the darkness of night.

Learning to write is like being able to talk to dozens of people
at the same time, some of them far away, rather than only one or
two who stand before us. Thus there is power in the pen or the pencil,
just as there is more power in the person who can speak than in the
baby who cannot.

Everyone has thoughts, but thoughts are like drops of water — if
you don’t catch them in a cup and drink they disappear into the ground.
To write is to hold a cup to your thoughts so that you may
make them more beautiful, more like what is in your heart to say.

It is written in the Holy Bible of the Christians and the Jews
that “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was
God.” This means that everything must have a name if we
are to understand the thing and its workings, and that name
is a word. And so we must study how to read and write words
if we are to understand this world, and if we are to hope
for a better life for ourselves and our families.

Arthur Miller, 1997