“Language creates boundaries around chaos and gives meaning to pain, to mess, and to confusion. Sentences emerge from the internal wilderness and form a path. And yet words can form a barrier between emotion and experience. Any writer will tell you how baffling is the gap between imagination and execution, between what is sensed and what is said. I write to discover what I think, and even what I feel. Through language, I chase disorderly emotion into a field with a perimeter I can see, and mark, and claim.”

Annotation

I stumbled across this today and wow, is it powerful. As a writer, this speaks to me on so many levels. I write to learn; I write to discover. <div><br></div><div>Words give way to what we experience, allow us to make sense of what is happening and understand what we're feeling, or even what we don't yet know we're feeling. </div><div><br></div><div>I often find it incredible that through writing, we find our answers. I love Irene's last line here, "Through language I chase disorderly emotion into a field with a perimeter I can see, and mark, and claim."</div><div><br></div><div>Yes. Through writing I create what is real, tangible, concrete. </div><div>What I can hold in my palm, twirl between my forefinger and thumb and say, 'Yes, this I understand.'</div>

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This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.