My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.

They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.

We all have names we don't know about.

When things are going well, you do have the sense that what you’re writing is being fed to you in some way. Auden compared writing a poem to cleaning an old piece of slate until the letters appear. The only way you could reveal your god is perhaps under hypnosis. It’s sacred and it’s secret, even to the writer.

My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.

It's hard to make progress with grief.

One of the unseen benefits of having children is that they deliver you from your own selfishness. There's no going back.