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A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist — nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.
--
Letter to Corona Machemer (1975-06-11)

 

E. B. White (Elwyn Brooks)

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Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film. It is just one of the things that crazy people want to do, like starting a law suit or sending long, unsolicited letters to people in the public eye. A letter from a nutter has a recognisable format and orthography, as if all letter-writing nutters have to go through some kind of Top Gun nutter-letter-writing academy.

 

Clive James

 

I pondered exactly how future biographers would go about writing the biographies of authors without letters. It's not like email and "chat" and whatnot will fill the void. Online journals help a little, but they are not, generally, the truly honest sorts of things that letters were, and only a few authors keep them. I tried for years to keep up letter writing, but was defeated in the end by too many unreliable correspondents.

 

Caitlin R. Kiernan

 

Let's face it, our reading and writing skills in our country...everyday there's a story in the paper about how shitty our schools are. They just keep getting worse, all the time. I read a book, it was filled with letters that soldiers in the Civil War had written to their girlfriends back home. These guys were kids. They were fourteen, fifteen-year old kids. Most of these guys had never even been to school, but every single letter in the book was incredible. Every single letter was like: (in southern accent) "My dearest Hannah, this morn finds me wrecked by the fiery pangs of your absence. I'll bear your cherished memory with me, as I battle the forces of tyranny and oppression." Now, think about what the typical letter from your average modern-day soldier, to his girlfriend back home in like, New Jersey's got to read like: (in New Jersey accent) "Dear Marie, it is hot as f**k out here. It is hard to fight these sand monkeys, wit your balls stuck to your legs. It is very, very hot out here because I am in the dessert. What else did I wanna aks you? Oh yeah: DON'T FUCK NOBODY TIL I GET BACK."

 

Greg Giraldo

 

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?

 

Martin Luther King

 

I loved writing about things when I was excited about them. It's not fun writing about bad movies. I used to think it was bad for my skin. It's painful writing about the bad things in an art form, particularly when young kids are going to be enthusiastic about those things, because they haven't seen anything better, or anything different.

 

Pauline Kael