“A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist — nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.”

“1) Writers who write for other writers should write letters.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

“Nothing means more to a writer than to get a letter from a reader who has deeply connected to one of your books.”

Katherine Paterson (1932) American children's writer born and mainly raised in China

“The man who has given himself to his country loves it better; the man who has fought for his friend honors him more; the man who has labored for his community values more highly the interests he has sought to conserve; the man who has wrought and planned and endured for the accomplishment of God's plan in the world sees the greatness of it, the divinity and glory of it, and is himself more perfectly assimilated to it.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

“This letter is written on the skin of one of the water sprites who drowned your parents.'
'Ick!' I cried, and dropped the letter on the kitchen table.”

Charlaine Harris Dead in the Family

“Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film. It is just one of the things that crazy people want to do, like starting a law suit or sending long, unsolicited letters to people in the public eye. A letter from a nutter has a recognisable format and orthography, as if all letter-writing nutters have to go through some kind of Top Gun nutter-letter-writing academy.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

“All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

“The Prophet is essentially a one-sided man. A certain moral idea fills his whole being, masters his every feeling and sensation, engrosses his whole attention. He can only see the world through the mirror of his idea; he desires nothing, strives for nothing, except to make every phase of the life around him an embodiment of that idea in its perfect form. His whole life is spent in fighting for this ideal with all his strength; for its sake he lays waste his powers, unsparing of himself, regardless of the conditions of life and the demands of the general harmony. His gaze is fixed always on what ought to be in accordance with his own convictions; never on what can be consistently with the general condition of things outside himself.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

“A woman's best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

“The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet