Any other vexations to report?" he asks. "I love the word 'vexations.'" "It's the 'x.' Nice to jump off a 'v' and bite into an 'x' like that." "Just the usual ones," she says. "How was the weekend?" "Vexing. Not really, I just wanted to say it. You?

At the risk, then, of being shunned by some of my gloomier peers, I venture to tell you that writers work like demons, suffer greatly, and are also happy, in unmistakable ways, some of the time. If we had no knowledge of happiness, our novels wouldn't sufficiently resemble real life. Some of us are even made a little bit happy, on occasion, by the writing process itself. I mean, really, if there wasn't some sort of enjoyment to be derived, would any of us keep doing it?

This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand.

The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.

We’d hoped for love of a different kind, love that knew and forgave our human frailty but did not miniaturize our grander ideas of ourselves.

People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two.

What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?