Writing quote of the day

"In writing, assume full rationality. Assume your audience is at its best and that you have to live up to it. That is, establish your general view of the audience, and then proceed as if you were writing to yourself as a member of that audience -- at your best, most perceptive potential. You must project the most cognitively severe mind -- and the only mind that you can project completely is your own at its most consistent, clearest level of functioning. In that sense, write as if you are trying to convince yourself." Ayn Rand, The Art of Nonfiction 22-23 (1969; Robert Mayhew ed., 2001).