Art & Creativity Quote by Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens is talking about writing the way other people talk about oxygen: not a craft, a condition. The opening feint - "I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn't write?" - is half joke, half confession. It’s the swagger of a man whose public persona was built on fluency, but it also betrays a private terror: if the engine stalls, so does the self.

The context matters. Late in his life, facing esophageal cancer, Hitchens wrote and spoke about losing physical ease while refusing sentimental narratives. Here, he dodges the expected elegy. Instead of "I’m brave" or "I’m suffering", he gives us logistics: can still read; can still write; just slower, less. That choice is the subtext. He’s measuring life in capacities, not feelings, turning mortality into a report on the tools of the trade. It’s stoicism with a columnist’s bite.

The line "fortunately hasn't proved to be the case" is doing quiet work. It acknowledges luck without conceding pity, and it frames continued literacy as a kind of defiance. Reading "any day" suggests a daily ration, like keeping the lights on. Writing "any day" repeats the phrase, but the second time it’s shadowed by limits. The rhythm enacts the narrowing he’s describing: same will, reduced throughput.

What makes it land is the inversion of the heroic. The drama isn’t in grand last words; it’s in the stubborn insistence on showing up to the page, even when the body starts editing you.