Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.

If I had a staff of even one person, or could tolerate a small amphetamine habit, or entertain the possibility of weekly blood transfusions, or had been married to Vera Nabokov, or had a housespouse of even minimal abilities, a literary life would be easier to bring about. (In my mind I see all your male readers rolling their eyes. But your female ones - what is that? Are they nodding in agreement? Are their fists in the air?)

If you're suicidal, and you don't actually kill yourself, you become known as 'wry.

When she packed up to leave, she knew that she was saying goodbye to something important, which was not that bad, in a way, because it meant that at least you had said hello to it to begin with.

If God Speaks Through Burning Bushes, Let's Burn Bush and Listen to What God Says.

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.

Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.