Quote of the Day (Alfred Kazin, on Writing)

"To write is in some way to cut the seemingly automatic pattern of violence, destructiveness and death wish. To write is to put the seeming insignificance of human existence into a different perspective. It is the need, the wish, and, please God, the ability, to reorder our physical faith."—Critic-memoirist Alfred Kazin (1915-1998), “The Self as History: Reflections on Autobiography,” in Telling Lives: The Biographer’s Art (1979), edited by Marc Pachter