But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read. - William Zinsser

Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.) Only when the job was over did I enjoy it.

Whenever I listen to an artist or an art historian I'm struck by how much they see and how much they know — and how much I don't.

Good art writing should therefore do at least two things. It should teach us how to look: at art, architecture, sculpture, photography and all the other visual components of our daily landscape. And it should give us the information we need to understand what we're looking at.

Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know — and what we don’t know — about whatever we’re trying to learn.