It's so easy to be charming

"I felt like a writer for the first time when I was twenty-nine years old and writing a series of poems. I was very strict with myself for some reason, and each time I finished a poem, I put the question to myself: is this what I really mean? It's so easy to be charming. It's a lot harder to say what you really mean." - Carol Shields, "An Epistolary Interview" with Joan Thomas.