“Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.
…
“Art is one of the few places where talent and madness can go to squirrel away inside each other.”
– Pat Conroy, The Writer, June 2012, excerpted from My Reading Life (2010)

Painting: The Barn, by Leslie Budewitz (pastel on sandpaper)