You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is.

We do not know how we'd behave. But a lot of people facing fascism didn't become fascists. I don't happen to believe that we are all monsters.

It made him feel invisible—not that he wanted to feel anything else.

A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.

For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.

So this was the rest of his life. It felt like a party to which he'd been invited, but at an address he couldn't actually locate. Someone must be having fun at it, this life of his; only, right at the moment, it wasn't him.