Our words, our selves

Barbara Wallraff:

With our words — particularly our written words, or words that we have written down before we say them — we can be our best selves, and even selves better than our actual best. Our words, outside ourselves, can be objects for us to reflect on, objects to perfect, evidence for us to study if we want to know whether we’re as kind or as clever as we like to think we are — and then they can be tools to help us be that kind or clever if we can just use them skillfully and patiently.

Word Court (New York: Harcourt, 2000).

[From 1983 to 2009, Wallraff was an editor and columnist for The Atlantic.]