Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity.
However it comes out — whether a design in a carpet, a painting on a wall, the shaping of a doorway — we recognize that medicinal element because of the instant healing effect, and we call it art. It consoles and heals something in us.
Why do human beings need to confess? Maybe if you don’t have that secret confession, you don’t have a poem — don’t even have a story. Don’t have a writer.