Our wonderful mongrel English
“In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who’s sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer’s attitude toward the particular story he’s decided to tell. But more than that, language is a part of the creation of the characters in the story, in the setting and in the sense of movement.” Donald Westlake
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on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 3/01/09 and is filed under Notes.
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