“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bend and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.” Hemingway

I tripped over this quote while cleaning up my notebooks. It was a serendipitous discovery and reinvigorated my connection with writing after a  long absence.