Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.

Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.

But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.

Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.

Thought is action in rehearsal.

A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.

Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.