... people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering.

... people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering.

I mean, first, almost all writers these days teach because they don't make enough money publishing to live on, to support themselves - people like Tobias Wolff, Anne Beattie, Amy Hempel, Stuart Dybek; a lot of short story writers, for one thing.

You don't have to even see the common man anymore if you don't want to! Only through the telescope on your yacht.

Tall people have a real advantage in the world.

Other things awaited. It was good to be young and to know it for once. So much unfolding to do.

Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself.