Language as a spiritual adventure

My love of writing grew out of my love of reading, with which my very life is identified. I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, meditated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate language with which to express each story: This seems to me quintessentially human, one of the great adventures of our species.

(Joyce Carol Oates, "The Importance of Childhood," in The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work, p. 12)