I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key — as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.

To write a love letter, you have to start, without knowing, what you want to say, and end, without knowing what you have said.

I wanted to make a full letter of it; and Robert always says that it’s the bane of a correspondence to make a full letter a condition of writing at all. But so much I had to tell you! while the mere outline of facts you had from others, I knew. Which is just said that you may forgive us both, and believe that we think of you and love you, yes, and talk of you, even when we don’t write to you, and that we shall write to you for the future more regularly, indeed.

It wasn't until later that she learned he could barely read or write. When she found it, she asked him how he managed to read all the long letters she wrote to him. Apparently, he just allowed his eyes to wander over them. Then he just wrote in his reply the vague impression he got from his gazing. But with the last letter, after casting his eyes over it, he was overcome with a feeling that he had missed something important. He read it word for word while asking different people to tell him what the words meant - hence the long time it took to reply.

"So to foreign parts he went again and, loving her so dearly, wrote letters to her which he tore up without sending lest she should think him foolish - such being the British temperament

"The Staircase

GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him — Tell him the page I did n’t write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried, 5
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.

“Tell him it was n’t a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled; 10
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him — No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it, 15
And then you and I were silenter.

“Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing ‘day!’
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended — What could it hinder so, to say? 20
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow, — happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!

In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

There was a man who was always writing to his daughter that she should not do things that were wrong that would disgrace him, she should not do such things and in every letter that he wrote to her he told her she should not do such things, that he was her father and was giving good moral advice to her and always he wrote to her in every letter that she should not do things that she should not do anything that would disgrace him. He wrote this in every letter he wrote to her, he wrote very nicely to her, he wrote often enough to her and in every letter he wrote to her that she should not do anything that was a disgraceful thing for her to be doing and then once she wrote back to him that he had not any right to write moral things in letters to her, that he had taught her that he had shown her that he had commenced in her the doing the things things that would disgrace her and he had said then when he had begun with her he had said he did it so that when she was older she could take care of herself with those who wished to make her do things that were wicked things and he would teach her and she would be stronger than such girls who had not any way of knowing better, and she wrote this letter and her father got the letter and he was a paralytic always after, it was a shock to him getting such a letter, he kept saying over and over again that his daughter was trying to kill him and now she had done it and at the time he got the letter he was sitting by the fire and he threw the letter in the fire and his wife asked him what was the matter and he said it is Edith she is killing me, what, is she disgracing us said the mother, no said the father, she is killing me and that was all he said then of the matter and he never wrote another letter.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

I'd see him do things that didn't fit with his face or hands, things like painting a picture at OT with real paints on a blank paper with no lines or numbers anywhere on it to tell him where to paint, or like writing letters to somebody in a beautiful flowing hand. How could a man who looked like him paint pictures or write letters to people, or be upset and worried like I saw him once when he got a letter back?

It wasn't until later that she learned he could barely read or write. When she found out, she asked him how he managed to read all the long letters she wrote to him. Apparently, he just allowed his eyes to wander over them. Then he just wrote in his reply the vague impression he got from this gazing.

There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.

I am, I must confess, an obsessive and superstitious letter-writer. When I am troubled I will write any long letter rather than make a telephone call. This is perhaps because I invest letters with magical power. To desiderate something in a letter is, I often irrationally feel, tantamount to bringing it about. A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance. (And, it must be admitted, of passing the buck.) It is a way of bidding time to stop.

When angry at a colleague, Lincoln would fling off what he called a “hot” letter, releasing all his pent wrath. He would then put the letter aside until he cooled down and could attend the matter with a clearer eye. When Lincoln’s papers were opened at the turn of the twentieth century, historians discovered a raft of such letters, with Lincoln’s notation underneath; “never sent and never signed.” Such forbearance set an example for the team. One evening, Lincoln listened as Stanton worked himself into a fury against one of the generals. “I would like to tell him what I think of him,” Stanton stormed. “Why don’t you,” suggested Lincoln. “Write it all down.” When Stanton finished the letter, he returned and read it to the president. “Capital,” Lincoln said. “Now, Stanton, what are you going to do about it?” “Why, send it of course!” “I wouldn’t,” said the president. “Throw it in the waste-paper basket.” “But it took me two days to write.” “Yes, yes and it did you ever so much good. You feel better now. That is all that is necessary. Just throw it in the basket.” And after some additional grumbling, Stanton did just that.