The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.

The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.