If writers write not just with paper and ink or a word processor but with their own life’s blood, then I think something like [our own words being just as much to us as from us] is perhaps always the case. A book you write out of the depths of who you are, like a dream you dream out of those same depths, is entirely your own creation. All the words your characters speak are words that you alone have put into their mouths, just as every situation they become involved in is one that you alone have concocted for them. But it seems to me nonetheless that a book you write, like a dream you dream, can have more healing and truth and wisdom in it at least for yourself than you feel in any way responsible for.
–Frederick Buechner,Telling Secrets
the long way home 