Just read a wonderful interview with Toni Morrison in The Paris Review on 'The Art of Fiction' (no.134). Here's just one of her observations on writing:

“The difficulty for me in writing—among the difficulties—is to write language that can work quietly on a page for a reader who doesn't hear anything. Now for that, one has to work carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm, and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.”