A Letter Name Quotes & Sayings

The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism. — Paul Krassner

Memory revises me.
Even now a letter
comes from a place
I don't know, from someone
with my name
and postmarked years ago,
while I await
injunctions from the light
or the dark;
I wait for shapeliness
limned, or dissolution.
Is paradise due or narrowly missed
until another thousand years?
I wait
in a blue hour
and faraway noise of hammering,
and on a page a poem begun, something
about to be dispersed,
something about to come into being. — Li-Young Lee

Jim, here's what I'm going to do," Kalinske said, now skimming through his Rolodex. "I think I have the name of someone who might be very interested in hearing about what SGI has to offer." Kalinske scrolled past the beginning of the alphabet, slowing down as he approached the letter L. "Do you have a pen ready?" He kept skimming until he got to the contact information he was searching for: Lincoln, Howard. — Blake J. Harris

I closed my eyes. The monster had named itself now - stolen its name from the Son of Sam, who'd called himself Mr. Monster in a letter to the paper. He'd begged the police to shoot him on sight, so he wouldn't kill again. He couldn't stop himself.
But I could. I am not a serial killer.
I put down the knife. — Dan Wells

You haven't got a letter on yours," George observed. "I suppose she thinks you don't forget your name. But we're not stupid-we know we're called Gred and Forge. — J.K. Rowling

In describing the honourable mission I charged him with, M. Pernety informed me that he made my name known to you. This leads me to confess that I am not as completely unknown to you as you might believe, but that fearing the ridicule attached to a female scientist, I have previously taken the name of M. LeBlanc in communicating to you those notes that, no doubt, do not deserve the indulgence with which you have responded.

{Explaining her use of a male pseudonym in a letter to Carl Friedrich Gauss, 1807} — Sophie Germain

My mother said the bizarre name Raccoona had surely been inspired, at least on a subliminal level, by the masks raccoons don't wear but simply have - the ones given them by nature ... [S]he pointed out that Le Guin had suspected all along that Raccoona and Tiptree were two authors that came from the same source, but in a letter to Alice she wrote that she preferred Tiptree to Raccoona: 'Raccoona, I think, has less control, thus less wit and power.'
Le Guin, Mother said, had understood something deep. 'When you take on a male persona, something happens.'
When I asked her what that was, she sat back in her chair, waved her arm, and smiled. 'You get to be the father. — Siri Hustvedt

At school, my religious-education teacher expressly forbade us to write "Xmas." It was regarded as a foul blasphemy. How would I like it if people used an anonymous X in place of my name? However, it would seem that the word "Xmas" is not blasphemous after all.

In the original Greek, "Christ" was written "Xristos," but the X isn't the Roman "ecks"; The Cassell Dictionary of Word Histories explains that it is the Greek letter "chi" (pronounced with a k to rhyme with "eye"--k'eye). The x is simply a stand-in for "the first letter of Greek Khristos--Christ." Indeed, the Chi-Rho (CH-r--the first two syllables of "Christ") illumination can be seen in the ancient Irish manuscript of the Gospels, The Book of Kells, which is housed at Trinity College in Dublin. This work dates back to the ninth century.

Of course, strictly speaking, Xmas" should still be pronounced "Christmas" because it's an abbreviation, not an alternative word. — Andrea Barham

Amal: It isn't sad. When they shut me in here first I felt the day was so long. Since the King's Post Office I like it more and more being indoors, and as I think I shall get a letter one day, I feel quite happy and then I don't mind being quiet and alone. I wonder if I shall make out what'll be in the King's letter?
Gaffer: Even if you didn't wouldn't it be enough if it just bore your name? — Rabindranath Tagore

Finally the gorilla queen had had enough. She wrote a letter to the editor of Baboons' Home Journal and asked for advice. The editor printed her letter (but in order to protect her privacy, changed her name from 'Gorilla Queen' to 'Worried in the Royal Castle'). The editor suggested hiring a local hunter to take the little troublemaker out into the woods, kill him, and cut his heart out and bring it back. 'Check page 44 of last month's issue for delicious recipes, at just pennies a serving!' she concluded. — Gregory Maguire

Tulips, I thought, staring at the jumble of letters before me. Had the ancient Greeks known them under a different name, if they'd had tulips at all? The letter psi, in Greek, is shaped like a tulip. All of a sudden, in the dense alphabet forest of the page, little black tulips began to pop up in a quick, random pattern like falling raindrops. — Donna Tartt

Serendipity is another word in the luck family. Invented by Horace Walpole in 1754, it appropriately began life as a misprint. Walpole wrote a letter to Horace Mann developing the idea of serendipity from a 'silly fairytale' about chance called The Three Princes of Serendip. But Walpole had made a mistake: the real title of the story was The Three Princes of Sarendip (the ancient name for Sri Lanka). Before its current fashionable — Ed Smith

After the war people said, 'If you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace?' When I was 17, I had a letter from the government saying, 'Dear Mr. Benn, will you turn up when you're 17 1/2? We'll give you free food, free clothes, free training, free accommodation, and two shillings, ten pence a day to just kill Germans.' People said, well, if you can have full employment to kill people, why in God's name couldn't you have full employment and good schools, good hospitals, good houses? — Tony Benn

Some of us, white and black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name.

If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own - which it is - and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night. — James Baldwin

He wrote so many letters that occasionally he would forget the name of the person he was writing to. "This is a letter to what's-his-name," he'd begin. "Jeane will know his name, ask Jeane." Jeane was our senate liaison and someone who knew nearly everyone. "Dear whoever," he would continue, "I just wanted to let you know how sorry I was to hear about your dad. I remember losing my dad when I was seventeen, and all I can say is it wasn't easy. Please know you'll be in our prayers over the coming weeks and months." I wondered if the governor would pray for somebody whose name he couldn't remember. Would he tell God to ask Jeane? — Barton Swaim

If you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than Frodo did. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there.
(J.R.R. Tolkien to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955.) — J.R.R. Tolkien

ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape as "One day a wag - what would the wretch be at? Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT, And said it was a god's name! ... " — Ambrose Bierce

Can you imagine a world in which the letter O does not exist? My name would be Thm Yrke. Think about that. — Thom Yorke

It is no small comfort that God hath written some Scriptures to you which He hath not to others. Read these, and think God is like a friend who sendeth a letter to a whole house and family, but who speaketh in His letter to some by name that are dearest to Him in the house. — Samuel Rutherford

Desmond ushered the man inside. He was stooped and ugly, with an unkempt beard and unwashed clothes, yet Father greeted him pleasantly and asked his name.
"Yoren, as it please m'lord. My pardons for the hour." He bowed to Arya. "And this must be your son. He has your look."
"I'm a girl," Arya said, exasperated. If the old man was down from the Wall, he must have come by way of Winterfell. "Do you know my brothers?" she asked excitedly. "Robb and Bran are at Winterfell, and Jon's on the Wall. Jon Snow, he's in the Night's Watch too, you must know him, he has a direwolf, a white one with red eyes. Is Jon a ranger yet? I'm Arya Stark." The old man in his smelly black clothes was looking at her oddly, but Arya could not seem to stop talking. "When you ride back to the Wall, would you bring Jon a letter if I wrote one?" She wished Jon were here right now. He'd believe her about the dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in the steel cap. — George R R Martin

My name is Nick Gautier and this is the story of my life. First off, get the name right. It's pronounced Go-shay not Go-tee-ay or Goat-chay (that has an extra H in it and as my mom says we're so poor we couldn't afford the extra letter). I'm not some fancy French fashion designer. I'm just a regular kid ... well as regular as someone with a stripper for a mother and a career felon for a father can be. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

When Luba was born, her parents named her after the Ukrainian word for love. Lubov. Moya Luba. Lubochka. Every letter Roman had ever written Luba started out with a different variation of her name. — Ksenia Rychtycka

I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothloriene no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horselords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fanghorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystefied as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22.
J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955 — J.R.R. Tolkien

I have known many an instance of a man writing a letter and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of a man signing his name and forgetting to write the letter. — Henry Ward Beecher

These were colours he'd never ever seen before; ones he couldn't possibly begin to name. Here, to his left, was a wooden clock, and it was painted, well not exactly green, but a colour that green might like to be if it had any imagination at all. And over there, beside the wooden board game whose overriding colour was not red, but something that red might look at enviously, blushing with embarrassment at its own dull appearance. And the wooden letter sets, well, there were those who might have said that they were painted yellow and blue, but they would have said this knowing that such plain words were an outrageous insult to the colouring on the letters themselves. — John Boyne

Chew on this: Human teeth can detect a grain of sand or grit 10 microns in diameter. A micron is 1/25,000 of an inch. If you shrank a Coke can until it was the diameter of a human hair, the letter O in the product name would be about 10 microns across. — Mary Roach

In writing, they deem it irreverent to express the Supreme Being by any special name. He is symbolized by what may be termed the heiroglyphic of a pyramid, /. In prayer they address Him by a name which they deem too sacred to confide to a stranger, and I know it not. In conversation they generally use a periphrastic epithet, such as the All-Good. The letter V, symbolical of the inverted pyramid, where it is an initial, nearly always denotes excellence of power; as Vril, of which I have said so much; Veed, an immortal spirit; Veed-ya, immortality; — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

JULY 29 Yes, LORD, we wait for You in the path of Your judgments. Our desire is for Your name and renown. Isaiah 26:8 Time can test almost anything and un-doubtedly anyone. Sometimes when we obey God and go where we believe He is sending us, we're not altogether certain what we expected, but after a while we ascertain, "This certainly can't be it." In fact, obeying God can initially seem to get us into a bigger mess than we left. It can make you think, "I must be an alien here." But actually, that may be your first indication you're in the right place. We can be in the bull's-eye of God's will for our lives even when things make utterly no sense. Sometimes we just to wait on that ugly, five-letter word: "later. — Beth Moore

A Minor is one of my all-time favorite keys to play in. It's a very moody key, and also 'A' is the first letter of my name. It just represents the songs through my eyes. — Alicia Keys

The Virgin Mary is called the [Greek words] (the "book of the Word of life") by the Greek Church. The book of the Gospel, the book of Christ's origins and life, can be written and proclaimed because God has first written his living Word in the living book of the Virgin's being, which she has offered to her Lord in all its purity and humility - the whiteness of a chaste, empty page. If the name of Mary does not often appear in the pages of the Gospel as evident participant in the action, it is because she is the human ground of humility and obedience upon which every letter of Christ's life is written. She is the Theotokos, too, in the sense that she is the book that bears, and is inscribed with, the Word of God. She keeps her silence that he might resonate the more plainly within her. — Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis

That Damon Matthews," Linda spat. "You know, take one letter out of his name and it spells ' damn' as in 'damn, that kid's a worthless sonovabitch'. — Kristen Ashley

I had just written a letter to Alison, but already she seemed far away, not in distance, not in time, but in some dimension for which there is no name. Reality, perhaps. — John Fowles

It saddened Cressen to remember that letter. No one had ever taught Stannis how to laugh, least of all the boy Patchface. The storm came up suddenly, howling, and Shipbreaker Bay proved the truth of its name. The lord's two-masted galley Windproud broke up within sight of his castle. From its parapets his two eldest sons had watched as their father's ship was smashed against the rocks and swallowed by the waters. A hundred oarsmen and sailors went down with Lord Steffon Baratheon and his lady wife, and for days thereafter every tide left a fresh crop of swollen corpses on the strand below Storm's End. — George R R Martin

I often imagine what sort of position Nightwing might seek out were she not currently torturing us as headmistress of Spence Academy for Young Ladies. Dear Sirs, her letter might begin. I am writing to inquire about your advert for the position of Balloon Popper. I have a hatpin that will do the trick neatly and bring about the wails of small children everywhere. My former charges will attest to the fact that I rarely smile, never laugh, and can steal the joy from any room simply by entering and bestowing upon it my unique sense of utter gloom and despair. My references in this matter are impeccable. If you have not fallen into a state of deep melancholia simply by reading my letter, please respond to Mrs. Nightwing (I have a Christan name but no one ever has leave to use it) in care of Spence Academy for Young Ladies. If you cannot be troubled to find the address on your own, you are not trying your very best. Sincerely, Mrs. Nightwing. — Libba Bray

No realm was too petty: The Ministry of Posts ruled that henceforth when trying to spell a word over the telephone a caller could no longer say "D as in David," because "David" was a Jewish name. The caller had to use "Dora." "Samuel" became "Siegfried." And so forth. "There has been nothing in social history more implacable, more heartless and more devastating than the present policy in Germany against the Jews," Consul General Messersmith told Undersecretary Phillips in a long letter dated September 29, 1933. He wrote, "It is definitely the aim of the Government, no matter what it may say to the outside or in Germany, to eliminate the Jews from German life. — Erik Larson

This is a Possible Letter. Until the last second, when I write your name beside that word "Dear," all
those sheets and months ago, this is a Possible Letter, pregnant with potentiality. I am very powerful
right now. I am all ready to mine the possibilities, make one of them fact. — China Mieville

Peasants seldom write letters, and for my father the arrival of a letter was an important ceremony that entailed quite a ritual: the glass of wine for the postman, the close scrutiny of his name on the envelope - mistakes can happen, and you must never open a letter that isn't addressed to you - and then the blade of the knife carefully inserted to liberate whatever the fates had in store. — Maurice Messegue

I once had a crush on one of my teachers. I wrote him a love letter and stuck it in a bag in his office. I didn't write my name on it, but I'm sure he figured out it was me. — Jennifer Hudson

He may make me feel like a fool, and like a woman who can do nothing, but what I can do I will. In my jewellery box is a dark locket of black tarnished silver and inside it locked in the darkness, I have his name: Richard Neville and that of George, Duke of Clarence, written in my blood on a piece of paper from the corner of my father's last letter. These are my enemies, I have cursed them. I will see them dead at my feet. — Philippa Gregory

Gradually I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome than when signed to a letter, — Mary Roberts Rinehart

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate. — Sandra Boynton

I renamed myself Ari.
If I switched the letter, my name was Air.
I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.
I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.
[Letter to the Millicent (Rogers) Library, February 22, 1894] — Mark Twain

MAULANA'S LAST LETTER TO SHAMS

Sometimes I wonder, sweetest love, if you
Were a mere dream in along winter night,
A dream of spring-days, and of golden light
Which sheds its rays upon a frozen heart;
A dream of wine that fills the drunken eye.

And so I wonder, sweetest love, if I
Should drink this ruby wine, or rather weep;
Each tear a bezel with your face engraved,
A rosary to memorize your name...

There are so many ways to call you back-
Yes, even if you only were a dream. — Jalaluddin Rumi

This Bible of Mine? It is the breath of God spoken into my weary bones. It is the armor I need to walk the roads He has chosen for me, and it's the confirmation of promises that withstand the test of hours and adversity.
It's a love letter, and it has my name on it.
It has your name on it. — Angie Smith

A Gift for You
I send you ...
The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope with your name on it, and the word YES written boldly above your name.
My Dear,
I am writing this to remind you of your 'essence beauty.' This is the part of you that has nothing to do with age, occupation, weight, history, or pain. This is the soft, untouched, indelible you. You can love yourself in this moment, no matter what you have, or haven't done or been.
See past any masks, devices, or inventions that obscure your essence.
Remember your true purpose, WHICH is only Love.
If you cannot see or feel love, lie down now and cry; it will cleanse your vision and free your heart.
I love you; I am you. — SARK

Fear comes in many forms, and we usually don't call it by its four-letter name. Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial. Most who avoid quitting their jobs entertain the thought that their course will improve with time or increases in income. This seems valid and is a tempting hallucination when a job is boring or uninspiring instead of pure hell. Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization. — Anonymous

My dear girl,' I answered in high spirits, for I felt elated at being active again. 'You are about to witness the birth of an immortal literary masterpiece. In a few moments, I shall begin the composition of an eloquent letter. This letter is going to be received by everyone in the Reich who has a Polish name. Or at least that is what shall try to accomplish. We want to remidn everyone of Polish origin that, although they are nominally German, Polish blood continues to flow in their veins.'
Danuta interrupted my oratory.
'Calm down, Witold. Don't excite yourself so. If you raise your voice much louder you shan't have to send any letters. Everybody in the Third Reich will have heard you, including the Gestapo. — Jan Karski

If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to lie unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself. Consider a person standing alone in a room. The house is silent. She is looking down at a piece of paper. Nothing else exists. All her veins go down into this paper. She takes her pen and writes on it some marks no one else will ever see, she bestows on it a kind of surplus, she tops it off with a gesture as private and accurate as her own name — Anne Carson

Lab126's name itself is a play on A to Z, with 1 representing the first letter of the alphabet and 26 the last.) — Anonymous

harbinger, n.
When I was in third grade, we would play that game at recess where you'd twist an apple while holding on to its stem, reciting the alphabet, one letter for each turn. When the stem broke, the name of your true love would be revealed. Whenever I played, I always made sure that the apple broke at K. At the time I was doing this because no one in my grade had a name that began with K. Then, in college, it seemed like everyone I fell for was a K. It was enough to make me give up on the letter, and I didn't even associate it with you until later on, when I saw your signature on a credit card receipt, and the only legible letter was that first K. I will admit: When I got home that night, I went to the refrigerator and took out another apple. But I stopped twisting at J and put the apple back. You see, I didn't trust myself. I knew that even if the apple wasn't ready, I was going to pull that stem — David Levithan

In the name of speed, Morse and Vail had realized that they could save strokes by reserving the shorter sequences of dots and dashes for the most common letters. But which letters would be used most often? Little was known about the alphabet's statistics. In search of data on the letters' relative frequencies, Vail was inspired to visit the local newspaper office in Morristown, New Jersey, and look over the type cases. He found a stock of twelve thousand E's, nine thousand T's, and only two hundred Z's. He and Morse rearranged the alphabet accordingly. They had originally used dash-dash-dot to represent T, the second most common letter; now they promoted T to a single dash, thus saving telegraph operators uncountable billions of key taps in the world to come. Long afterward, information theorists calculated that they had come within 15 percent of an optimal arrangement for telegraphing English text. — James Gleick

I fondle the last two charms: a letter C- oh yes, I was his first girlfriend to use his first name. I smile at the thought. And finally, there's a key.
"To my heart and soul," he whispers. — E.L. James

Troo's a little in front of me bouncing a red rubber ball that she 'borrowed' from the playground shed. She's warming up to play that A my name is Annie and I come from Alabama with a carload of apples game. When she gets to the letter f, her name will be Fifi and she will come from where else but France. I refuse to repeat what she will have a carload of. — Lesley Kagen

Around the same time, the president-elect opened an equally chilling letter from yet another anonymous enemy in Washington: "Caesar had his Brutus. Charles the First his Cromwell. And the President may profit by their example." The letter was signed "Vindex" - the name of the first Roman governor to rebel against Nero - "one of a sworn band of 10, who have resolved to shoot you in the inaugural procession on the 4th of March, 1861. — Harold Holzer

There were a couple of things in the intervention that made me know I needed help. One was a letter from my daughter saying that she was ashamed she had the same last name as I did, which will shock you a little bit. — Pat Summerall

With your name on my mouth
and a kiss that never
broke away from yours. — Pablo Neruda

The Blessing
Heads are covered by the Tallit, or prayer shawl; hands are extended out with the fingers splayed to form the shape of the letter Shin, the first letter in the word Shaddai, a name for the Almighty. The chant, in Hebrew, is loud and ecstatic: "May the Lord bless and keep you."
The Shekhina is summoned; the feminine essence of God. She enters the sanctuary to bless the congregation. The very sight of her, the awesome light emanating from the Shekhina, is dangerous to behold. — Leonard Nimoy

He begged me not to be impatient - to moderate my transports - to read soothing books - to drink nothing stronger than Hock - and to bring the consolations of philosophy to my aid. The fool! if he could not come himself, why, in the name of every thing rational, could he not have enclosed me a letter of presentation? — Edgar Allan Poe

True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier - when it's spelled with a lower case letter. — Richard Hamming

One of the greatest things I've ever seen happen was the morning I opened the newspaper and it said that some very powerful government officials had decided to change the name of "french fries" to "freedoom fries" and "french toast" to "freedom toast". It was impressive. I wanted to write a letter to them just to thank them, just for proving globally that they were absolute imbeciles. — Johnny Depp

And that love letter you wrote," Rowan added helpfully. "Signing it with another chap's name." Emma Smallwood's eyes widened, and she turned to look at him, brows high. Henry felt his neck heat. His cravat seemed suddenly far too tight. "That's right," Phillip nodded as the memory returned to him. "Pugsworth, was it not?" Julian grinned at Miss Smallwood, clearly enjoying himself. "Did you really think this Pugsworth fellow in love with you?" Heaven help him, Henry hoped she wouldn't burst into disillusioned tears. Not all these years later. And not over Milton Pugsworth. But Miss Smallwood remained her imperturbable self. "Goodness no," she said. "For all his faults, Mr. Pugsworth spelled exceptionally well and had the neatest hand I ever saw. Your brother, on the other hand, never did learn to spell. And I recognized his sloppy scratchings the moment I saw them." Phillip gave her a long look of amused approval. "Bravo, Emma. — Julie Klassen

Wow! So you're really smart, huh? This brilliant deduction was offered by a girl with a Marilyn Monroe voice who used glittery pens and wrote each letter of her name in a different color, surrounded by hearts and stars. I had dubbed her Sparkles. — Amy Harmon

Bob, I am grateful for your
Three letter name.
It's another reminder of home
Of a world predictable
Of a life I had. — Wilfred Waters

he failed to report Herod's alleged wholesale slaughter of male infants at the rumor of a "royal birth" that might upset his reign. He did not mention the very public spectacle of a slow, agonizing death of a famous condemned miracle worker and healer. Though he did find that Josephus referred to no less than twenty individuals by the name of Yeshua - the letter "J" not in existence until the fourteenth century - Ryan's investigation could turn up not even a single legitimate detail of the physical life of Christ in Josephus's entire opus. — Kenneth Atchity

Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience ... Moving ... compassionate. — Leigh Newman

Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted" - "not permitted" - "this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read.
-Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Someone asked me if I would like to write a man on death row, be a pen pal, and I was like, sure. I volunteered. I had been in a place in my life - a relationship had ended; my parents were getting elderly - I was kind of adrift. The name that was given to me, just randomly, was Todd Willingham. And he wrote me a letter, and in this letter, he thanked me for writing him and [said that] if I would like to visit, he would put me on his visitor list ... I was just really struck by the letter from Todd. It was very polite; it was very kind. — Elizabeth Gilbert

My name came from me wanting a 'double-letter' artist name. In search of the ultimate L-word to put in front of my real name Luke, I heard Snoop Dogg rapping in Gin and Juice 'Laaaaiiidbackk ... ' and I was sold! — Laidback Luke

But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else.
Even when there is no one.
A story is like a letter. Dear You, I'll say. Just you, without a name. Attaching a name attaches you to the world of fact, which is riskier, more hazardous: who knows what the chances are out there, of survival, yours? I will say you, you, like an old love song. — Margaret Atwood

A few years after you disappeared, a postal worker named Ben Carver was sentenced to death for murdering six young men. (He is a homosexual, which, according to Huckleberry, means he is not attracted to murdering young women.) Rumors have it that Carver cannibalized some of his victims, but there was never a trial, so the more salacious details were not made public. I found Carver's name in the sheriff's file ten months ago, the fifth anniversary of your disappearance. The letter was written on Georgia Department of Corrections stationery and signed by the warden. He was informing the sheriff that Ben Carver, a death row inmate, had mentioned to one of the prison guards that he might have some information pertaining to your disappearance. — Karin Slaughter

He has lost his daughters, but he has also lost the memory of losing them. But he has not lost the loss. Pain is as present in his body as his signature is in his hand. He can sign his name perfectly, but he can't print it. W, he tries. But the a is impossible without the cursive tilt, the remembered motion of the letter before. He knows his name but can't see, can't feel, the separate parts, which are only possible from the inertia of his hand. He knows his grief, too, but its source is also lost without its movement. It is a static thing, unrecognizable, disconnected. — Emily Ruskovich