Hearing from Lewis

     I love reading authors' letters. It really makes you feel like you know them, and plus, it's just interesting to see how much effort people put into communication back in the day-- you read these beautiful, long letters by these brilliant people who chose their words so carefully, and it kind of makes you regret the two word long Facebook message you just sent.
    I have a book of T.H. White's letters (which is really quite hilarious. He would invite over all the people in the town who didn't get along so that he could sit back and watch them fight rather than try to make conversation), a book of John Keats' letters to Fanny Brown (although I got it at a discount bookstore so it picks up on page 37. Oh well, it's still beautiful), and a book containing a few of Lewis Carroll's. I've also read some of Lewis' Letters to Children (which are so sweet). But what I just found--well, not just, about two months ago actually--is a huge, fat book of C.S. Lewis' letters, addressed to people like his brother and Dorothy Sayers. Anyway....
    All of this long introduction just to share one wonderful quote about writing from a letter Lewis wrote to a lady name Joan Lancaster on June 26, 1956:

"[Wordsworth's] Prelude (you're bound to read it about ten years hence. Don't try it  now, or you'll only spoil it for later reading) is full of moments in which everything except the thing itself is described. If you become a writer, you'll be trying to describe the thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across."