Quote of the Day (Geoffrey O’Brien, on How a Good Quotation Can Serve a Writer)

“Anyone, of course, might develop a passion for quotes, but for a writer it’s a particularly intimate connection. A good quotation can serve as a model for one’s own work, a perpetual challenge with the neatness and self-sufficiency of its structure laid bare in the mind. How does it work? How might a quotation be done differently, with the materials and urgencies of a different moment? Perhaps writers should begin, in fact, by inwardly uttering again what has already been uttered, to get the feel of it and to savor its full power.”— American poet, editor, book and film critic, translator, and cultural historian Geoffrey O’Brien, “We Are What We Quote,” The New York Times, March 3, 2013

Folks, just remember to source that quotation—and accurately!