Wendell Berry on Writing and Telling the Truth

Apparently an English/writing teacher wrote to Wendell Berry and asked him what he would say to her students, and got a letter in reply. This is part of what he wrote:

The thought that I keep returning to is this: By taking up the study of writing now, you are assuming consciously, probably for the first time in your lives, a responsibility for our language. What is that responsibility? I think it is to make words mean what they say. It is to keep our language capable of telling the truth.

There is more, though it is (not surprisingly) short. Go read the whole thing, however, because it is certainly worth it.