A fountain pen leans in a glass of water with a small pale bulb hanging beside it against a coral background.

Original artwork, not a still

Don Marquis

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The speaker separates thinking from writing, then uses a general claim about doing two things badly at once to justify the separation. The joke makes an absence of thought sound like disciplined concentration. Its neat logic becomes comic because the two activities are treated as unrelated tasks.

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