Monday, March 8, 2010

Words Woven

"A better book than I shall ever write was there;
leaf after leaf presenting itself to me,
just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour,
and vanishing as fast as written,
only because my brain wanted the insight
and my hand the cunning to transcribe it.

"At some future day,
it may be,
I shall remember a few scattered fragments
and broken paragraphs,
and write them down,
and find the letters turn to gold upon the page."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne ("The Custom House")

Nathaniel Hawthorne tends to be long winded and there are times when I find myself literally falling asleep over his stories! But in this instance, I don't think anyone could have written better what an author feels. The stories crowding in our heads, just waiting to be written down. And there are those moments when the words that come to our fingers are indeed golden.

2 comments:

bekah said...

Hey! Received your letter (and Hannah's) today, but will probably be a while in replying...once again. :(:( :):) Thanks for the submissions. The recipe sounds great, but I'm not sure I'll be printing the quote ( I want more Christian type of stuff, but I may put it in as a tip to writers :)). Anyways, no more time! :)lol

Naomi T. said...

Hi Bekah,

I totally understand if you don't want to print something that's non-christian. That did cross my mind as I was writing it out. I didn't have anything else on hand at the time, though. Sorry. :-P

Hope you're well!