Quote of the Day (Thoreau)

“A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius—a Shakespeare, for instance—would make the history of his parish more interesting than another’s history of the world.”—Henry David Thoreau, The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals, edited by Odell Shepard
(This is my answer to those who would wonder why anyone would be interested in reading about one person’s memoir in one small community. Put another way, it is up to the individual writer to use what John O’Hara called his “special knowledge” to illuminate ways of life not known to others.)