In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.

Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.

...some people coddle their own afflictions the way others spoil small pedigreed dogs with cans of pate.

...hoarders of guilty secrets are inevitably consumed with appearances.

It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in.