# Quote — Rebecca Solnit, Hope In The Dark

> Writing is lonely, it’s an intimate talk with the dead, with the unborn, with the absent, with strangers, with the readers who may never come to be and who even if they read you will do so weeks, years, decades later. An essay, a book, is one statement in a long conversation you could call culture or history; you are answering something or questioning something that may have fallen silent long ago, and the response to your words may come long after you’re gone and never reach your ears, if anyone hears you in the first place. (p64)

- Author: [Rebecca Solnit](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rebecca-solnit.md)
- Book: [Hope In The Dark](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rebecca-solnit/hope-in-the-dark.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit#Hope_in_the_Dark:_The_Untold_History_of_People_Power_(2004)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/rebecca-solnit/hope-in-the-dark/writing-is-lonely

## More from this book

> Most of us would say, if asked, that we live in a capitalist society, but vast amounts of how we live our everyday lives - our interactions with and commitments to family lives, friendships, avocations, membership in social, spiritual and political organizations-are in essence noncapitalist or even anticapitalist, full of things we do for free, out of love, and on principle.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rebecca-solnit/hope-in-the-dark/most-of-us-would.md)

> A better world, yes; a perfect world, never. (p82)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rebecca-solnit/hope-in-the-dark/a-better-world.md)

> Violence is the power of the state; imagination and non-violence the power of civil society.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/rebecca-solnit/hope-in-the-dark/violence-is-the.md)