Ars longa, verse the nty-ntieth...

From yesterday's New York Times Book Review:

Writing is the act of accepting the huge shortfall between the story in the mind and what hits the page. "From your lips to God's ears," goes the old Yiddish wish. The writer, by contrast, tries to read God's lips and pass along the words, via some crazed game of Telephone, to a further listener. And for that, no interface will ever be clean or invisible enough for us to get the passage right.

- Richard Powers, "How to Speak Like a Book" (p. 31)