"I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn't write? But that fortunately hasn't proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words"
About this Quote
For Hitchens, writing was not a hobby but the axis of selfhood. The hypothetical loss of the craft prompts an existential shudder: what would remain if the primary instrument of thought, argument, and identity were taken away? That fear is immediately countered by relief and practicality. Reading is intact, and with it the replenishing stream of ideas and company. Writing, though slowed and diminished in output, persists as a daily discipline. The line sketches a portrait of a mind refusing capitulation while acknowledging the body’s demands.
The context is the late period of his life, after his cancer diagnosis, when he publicly chronicled illness in essays later gathered as Mortality. He had already been famous for velocity and abundance: columns, polemics, book-length indictments, and a schedule of debates that depended on stamina and voice. Illness made him confront limits of energy, breath, and concentration. Rather than romanticizing suffering, he treats it as a logistical reality. Slower is not failure; it is a recalibration. Fewer words can be an editorial virtue, a spur to rigor and precision. There is a tacit credo here: better to write less and well than to surrender the craft entirely.
The insistence on reading every day signals a deeper conviction about the life of the mind. Reading is a renewable source of solidarity and curiosity, the thing one can do when all else is curtailed. It keeps the conversation going, even if the spoken voice falters and the written one arrives in shorter pulses. Gratitude threads the remark without sentimentality: fortunate that the essential tools are still available, even if their use is taxing.
What emerges is a humane stoicism. Work remains, joy remains, and thinking remains, pared back to their essentials. If mortality imposes a stricter budget of words and hours, the expenditure becomes more deliberate, and the vocation shines through its constraints.
The context is the late period of his life, after his cancer diagnosis, when he publicly chronicled illness in essays later gathered as Mortality. He had already been famous for velocity and abundance: columns, polemics, book-length indictments, and a schedule of debates that depended on stamina and voice. Illness made him confront limits of energy, breath, and concentration. Rather than romanticizing suffering, he treats it as a logistical reality. Slower is not failure; it is a recalibration. Fewer words can be an editorial virtue, a spur to rigor and precision. There is a tacit credo here: better to write less and well than to surrender the craft entirely.
The insistence on reading every day signals a deeper conviction about the life of the mind. Reading is a renewable source of solidarity and curiosity, the thing one can do when all else is curtailed. It keeps the conversation going, even if the spoken voice falters and the written one arrives in shorter pulses. Gratitude threads the remark without sentimentality: fortunate that the essential tools are still available, even if their use is taxing.
What emerges is a humane stoicism. Work remains, joy remains, and thinking remains, pared back to their essentials. If mortality imposes a stricter budget of words and hours, the expenditure becomes more deliberate, and the vocation shines through its constraints.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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