Oriana Fallaci, The Egotists Listening to someone talk isn't at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape. I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. . . . To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization. 1985 Windbags can be right.
Aphorists can be wrong.
It is a tough world. Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilirating, racking, relieving. You can stroke people with words.