Too Late

“One of the saddest sentences I know is, ‘I wish I had asked my mother about that. I wish I had asked my father about that.’ Writers are the custodians of memory so it’s extremely important to get to people, interview your parents, your grandparents. Don’t worry what anybody else thinks. The important thing is to be a recorder of the past. But it’s very important work, I think, writing family history, whether anyone ever sees it or not.”

—William Zinsser (1922-2015), writer and writing teacher, author of On Writing Well, from NPR interview, 2006.

• Editorial Comment: Now we’ll never know.

PeezPix

Good night

 

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“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard