Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot.

Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.

When we die we are only stories in the minds of others, I thought

Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.

Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.

I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years. Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern. The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, Nordstrom thought, was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.