I ran across this a few minutes ago and thought of you writers here who might enjoy a long-pedigreed apophthegm on writing. Its earliest forms date to the ninth century.
“I love to recall a riddle that goes: ‘Bianca campagna, nera semenza, l’uomo che la fa sempre la pensa’. [‘White field, black seed, the man who does it thinks of it always’.] The ‘white field’ is the sheet of paper, the ‘black seed’ is the writing, and ‘the man who does it’ is the writer, who must always be on his guard, thinking about what he’s writing and what he’s written.
This is a riddle from my region, and its true message is actually this: writing is important for those who know how to do it, and even more so for those who don’t know how to do it, don’t know how to see it, and don’t know how to read it.” (source)