Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.

The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great, and are destined to be forgotten.

Nothing is wrong with you. You're not different. Everybody feels as bad as you do: this is just what writing a novel feels like. To write a novel is to come in contact with raw, primal feelings, hopes and longings and psychic wounds, and try to make a big public word-sculpture out of them, and that is a crazy hard thing to do.

It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.

A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving.

It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.

Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.