"You're still in touch. I guess that's the test."

"Barely--barely."

"A psychiatrist could help. There's a good man in Albany."

Finnerty shook his head. "He'd pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." He nodded, "Big, undreamed-of things -- the people on the edge see them first."

Source: Player Piano

The writing style which is most natural for you is the bound to echo the speech you heard as a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

Source: "How to write with style," an ad for International Paper Co. Appeared in the 9/15/1980 Newsweek