It was as if Hannah had sprung a leak and her character, usually so meticulous and contained, was spilling all over the place.

Justice wields an erratic sword, grants mercy to fortunate few. Yet if man doesn't fight for her, 'tis chaos he's left to.

But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better.

The late great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British essayist, lecturer, satirist, and social observer, wrote in his autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), "When one travels abroad, one doesn't so much discover the hidden Wonders of the World, but the hidden wonders of the individuals with whom one is traveling. They may turn out to afford a stirring view, a rather dull landscape, or a terrain so treacherous one finds it's best to forget the entire affair and return home.

What you tend to find in the personal lives of brilliant men is devastation akin to a nuclear bomb going off.

I haven't always been a writer and I suppose I tiptoed around the idea of writing full time, because it's so isolating.

Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.