Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun.

(Such a life)engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart.

You emptied the top rack of the dishwasher but not the bottom, so the clean dishes have gotten all mixed up with the dirty ones - and now you want to have sex?

I've accrued a kind of patience, I believe, loosely like change.

[T]he normal and the everyday are often amazingly unstoppable, and what is unimaginable is the cessation of them. The world is resilient, and, no matter what interruptions occur, people so badly want to return to their lives and get on with them. A veneer of civilization descends quickly, like a shining rain. Dust is settled.

Love is a fever," she said. "And when you come out of it you'll discover whether you've been lucky - or not.

Her life her life had taken on the shape of a terrible mistake. She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hair-brush and told, "There you go." She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush.