White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but on… - Percival Everett

I read and read, but what I needed was to write. I needed that pencil. I could not keep track of my thoughts. I could not follow my own reasoning after a while. This was perhaps because I couldn't stop reading long enough to make space in my head. I was like a man who had not eaten for a season and had then gorged himself until sick. And my books, once read, were not what I wanted, not what I needed.
(...)
With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them,

He resisted the urge to let satire ring through his voice.