"Writing has been an important exercise to..." - Quote by Barack Obama
Writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are. The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.
More by Barack Obama
“I think when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody.”
“And there’s been drift in Afghanistan over the last couple of years. That’s something that we intend to fix this.”
“We're not a fragile people. We're not a frightful people. Our power doesn't come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don't look to be ruled.”
More on Writing
“All my life, I've been frightened at the moment I sit down to write.”
“The good ending dismisses us with a touch of ceremony and throws a backward light of significance over the story just read. It makes it, as they say, or unmakes it. A weak beginning is forgettable, but the end of a story bulks in the reader's mind like the giant foot in a foreshortened photograph.”
“The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.”
More on Self Reflection
“Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.”
“I must ... warn my readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, not against my stage figures.”
“I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores.”