Creativity Quote by Ruth Pitter

A small sentence with the social choreography of a whole literary era folded inside it. Ruth Pitter’s “I am much interested and honoured by what you tell me of C. S. Lewis” is less an opinion about Lewis than a performance of tact: curiosity without claim, admiration without clinging, closeness without name-dropping. The passive framing - “what you tell me” - keeps Lewis at a polite distance, as if to say: I won’t presume intimacy, but I’m listening.

The key word is “honoured.” It doesn’t mean she’s flattered by gossip; it signals that Lewis is being treated as a figure whose character is best approached through reputation, testimony, and other people’s careful descriptions. Pitter, a poet who moved in overlapping circles with mid-century Christian writers, understood how quickly association could harden into social currency. So she registers attention and respect while refusing to cash the relationship in.

That’s the subtext: this is correspondence etiquette functioning as moral stance. “Interested” offers openness - she wants to know more. “Honoured” reins in the appetite; it frames the exchange as a privilege, not a transaction. The line also hints at a quieter hierarchy. Lewis’s public gravity is already assumed, and Pitter positions herself as someone who receives news of him rather than dispenses it. In an age when literary friendship could be both spiritual fellowship and strategic networking, her restraint reads as its own kind of character.