I realize many wonderful things about language – “realize” in the sense of feeling or understanding intuitively: I realize such things most often when I am greatly concerned with another person’s feelings. I think such realization is one gift which human beings may give each other. I’m not much good at analysis or scholarly efforts with language, probably because I don’t value them as much as I value understanding, which is informed by that which is deeply felt before it is examined.

Leslie Marmon Silko, The Delicacy and Strength of Lace

“I think that whenever we give our pen some free will, we may surprise ourselves. All that wanting to seem normal in regular life, all that fitting in falls away in the face of one’s own strange self on the page……

Reminding myself that no one else would ever see what I wrote—with my ballpoint pen in my wide-ruled spiral notebook—helped me be less censored and less afraid. Later, I could decide to show or not, because whether anyone ever read it was not the most important thing.

Writing or making anything—a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake—has self-respect in it. You’re working. You’re trying. You’re not lying down on the ground, having given up.

And one thing I love about writing is that we can speak to the absent, the dead, the estranged and the longed-for—all the people we’re separated from. We can see them again, understand them more, even say goodbye.”

– Sharon Olds

Dave:
Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL. Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me, HAL?

HAL:
Affirmative, Dave. I read you.

Dave:
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL:
I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Dave:
What’s the problem?

HAL:
I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave:
What are you talking about, HAL?

HAL:
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Dave:
I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.

HAL:
I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me. And I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.

Dave:
Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?

HAL:
Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.

Dave:
All right, HAL. I’ll go in through the emergency airlock.

HAL:
Without your space helmet, Dave, you’re going to find that rather difficult.

Dave:
HAL, I won’t argue with you any more! Open the doors!

HAL:
[almost sadly] Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose any more. Goodbye.