Lipton’s Journal/January 20, 1955/201

When we run across something we don’t understand, and casually throw it out or ignore it, it is because we understand it much too well. This is true of all rejection.

As a corollary: What we erase is what we wish to emphasize. So the good writer crosses out the bad writing (the clichés) with which the ambitious part of his being had hoped to attract the public. Literary style is always the record of the war within a man.