Up: [[Thinking]] > [!Orbit] Sonke Ahrens > Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work. > [!Orbit] Me > Writing is the medium of thought. > [!Orbit] William Zinsser > Writing is thinking on paper. anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly -- on any subject at all. > [!Orbit] E. M. Forster > How do I know what I think until I see what I say? > [!Orbit] Cicero > It is doubtful whether man ever brings his faculties to bear with their full force on a subject until he writes upon it. > [!Orbit] James Van Allen, physicist > The mere process of writing is one of the most powerful tools we have for clarifying our own thinking. I am never so clear about a subject as when I have just finished writing about it. The writing process produces that clarity. > [!orbit] Joan Didion > I don't know what I think until I write it down. > [!Orbit] Janet Emig > Scientists, artists, mathematicians, lawyers, engineers ... 'think' with pen to paper, chalk to blackboard, hands on terminal keys ... developed thinking is seldom possible any other way. > [!Orbit] James Somers in [J.Somers.Net.Blog](https://jsomers.net/blog/more-people-should-write) Sept. 27, 2012 > When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular I’ll remember everything better; everything will mean more to me. That’s because everything I perceive will unconsciously engage on its way in with the substance of my preoccupation. A preoccupation, in that sense, is a hell of a useful thing for a mind. > [!Orbit] Marion Milner in *A Life of One’s Own* > …I was normally only aware of the ripples on the surface of my mind, but the act of writing a thought was a plunge which at once took me into a different element where the past was intensely alive. (p. 38)