Often quoting Stendhal to the effect that one should “write every day, whether inspired or not,” Alain encouraged his students to sit down at a desk and write prolifically, as he did, at least two hours a day. He maintained that one should write on large sheets of paper, in a beautiful hand with extremely wide margins for annotations (a beautiful script was a token of self-mastery, and he trusted in the inspirational power of blank paper).
—Francine Du Plessix Gray, Simone Weil (Penguin Lives)
