I've Rarely Agreed More

[Y]ou write in order to be read, it is the copulation of the act of writing. It’s the point of entry of your writerly subjectivity into the subjectivity of another, the infiltration by words. Words are the stuff of thought, invisible, intimate. I’ve always loved the idea that you could string a bunch of them together and make something that through imagery, word-sound, rhythm, and idea-content can invade another person’s mind, capture them.

Yes, you get the attention of the reader. But it’s more than that. In real, true, immersed reading, the words from the page are, in effect, replacing the words inside the reader’s head. And since words are the stuff of thought, almost the stuff of consciousness . . . Well, you can see that writing has a very powerful imperialist component. Conquest. On another front, reading is what gives you the essential material as a writer — not the experience of life, but choice.

And these are learned slowly, gradually, by osmosis, and there is very little significant writing that doesn’t depend on a deeply-schooled literary imagination. I am often shocked, I teach a lot of writers, would-be writers and they don’t read. They are not obsessed with the words of others. I don’t get it. If you’re not completely driven, get the hell away. To be completely driven is to be a reader, a deep reader.
-- Sven Birkerts, Pif Magazine interview