The great happiness in life in creativity belongs to amateurs.

Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.

I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing--for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?

Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.

... such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing.

You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.