Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

by Anne Lamott

But we feel morally certain of some things, sure that we’re right, even while we know how often we’ve been wrong, and we need to communicate these things. For instance, I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don’t think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex. When you start off writing, if you are anything like me, you may want to fill the page with witticisms and shimmering insights so that the world will see how uniquely smart and sensitive you are. Over the course of time, as you get the knack of doing some writing every day, what seems to happen almost organically is that you end up wanting your characters to act out the drama of humankind. Much of this drama does not involve witticisms and shimmer. Yet this drama is best couched in moral terms; the purpose of most great writing seems to be to reveal in an ethical light who we are.

I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, “A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost,” while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head.