You say you want to talk, But you don't. You stonewall me.
I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have an attitude where they are not easily fooled.
Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.
All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.
Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.
With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.
When we humans speak, we are not merely communicating information but attempting to make an impression and achieve a goal.
You have to keep walking, no matter what. If you don't, it's a living death. You're just standing in one place dying.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Writing songs about fancying people in dance clubs is all very well but it's not the be-all and end-all. There are other topics.