"A writer continually struggles for clarity against the language he's using or, more accurately, against the common usage of language. He doesn't see language with the readability and clarity of something printed out. He sees it, rather, as a terrain full of illegibilities, hidden paths, impasses, surprises, and obscurities. Its map is not a dictionary but the whole of literature and perhaps everything ever said. Its obscurities, its lost senses, its self-effacements come about for many reasons-because of the way words modify each other, write themselves over each other, cancel one another out, and, most importantly, because what's left unsaid always counts for as much, or more, than what is said...Language is always an abbreviation," (of the truth.)
~John Berger
