"What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers."
~Logan Pearsall Smith, "All Trivia," Afterthoughts, 1931
This quote describes how a good writer does not simply state the idea they are trying to convey, but rather creeps up on the idea as they are writing. It hints that good writing actually highlights the ideas between the lines: the power of the absence of words. It may be that, in all writing, the idea that the author seeks to describe is never what they describe in words: the reader has to look behind the author's writing to see what the message really is.
James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I recently read, is full of fantastic language! Beautiful read, even through the heavily philosophical bits.
- Submitted by Savannah
Great comments on writing, thank you. I think you're right, that we're all trying in one way or another to say more than what the words we write actually say... to convey something that goes beyond the words
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