"The one good thing about not seeing you is that I can write you letters"
~Svetlana Alliluyeva

"What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call" ~Liz Carpenter


In Spain I learned to revive the handwritten letter. We used to send them between Murcia and Madrid like crazy because our parents wouldn't let us talk on the phone (too expensive)...friends from the beach we were missing who would fill us in on all the novedades! I even exchanged addresses one night in Salamanca on a school trip with a girl from Andalucia...I thought she would forget all about what she had said, but sure enough, I got a letter in the mail and continued to stay in contact with her for some time, even though we never met again.

This evening I opened the door and on the stairs was a letter waiting for me. My little eskimo eyes peeped open and I snatched it up off the stairs. I waited til I got upstairs, sat down (but with my coat on), and I opened it.

I like to imagine the voice of the writer, look at the penmanship for signs of emotion and re-read the sentences that strike me the most.

I loved this letter and I'll share a few reasons why:
...it was from Enrico and he writes in such a lovely and unique way. The beginning of his sentences cause intrigue and I find myself looking to the following words to discover where he is going with his thoughts and by the end of the sentence, I find myself surprised, laughing, happy!

I think it's a shame to discredit letters by never writing at least one...even in the same city...the least you can do is confuse one of your friends and that is worth a laugh, isn't it?!


"I consider it a good rule for letter-writing to leave unmentioned what the recipient already knows, and instead tell him something new"
~Sigmund Freud

"I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage"
~Henry David Thoreau, Walden