I hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.

I hate Gucci,' said Francis. 'Do you?' said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. 'Really? I think it's rather grand.' 'Come on, Henry.' 'Well, it's so expensive, but it's so ugly too, isn't it? I think they make it ugly on purpose. And yet people buy it out of sheer perversity.' 'I don't see what you think is grand about that.' 'Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale,' said Henry.

And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky—so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.

In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.