“There is, perhaps, aside from Italy, no other country in the world where the main goal of every citizen is to become a writer; and there are few others where what is written – sheer yearning of the novice or customary declaration – slips, so to speak, off the attention of other writers, like rain on a windowpane…”

https://paralleltexts.blog/2016/08/14/un-paese-di-scrittoria-country-of-writers-by-anna-maria-ortese/