and now, all these years later, it seem to him that the most horrible fact of human existence was that broken hearts mended

Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward life with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand.

For me, that emotional payoff is what it’s all about. I want you to laugh or cry when you read a story...or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.

Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren't going to come and take you away. Even William Strunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognized the delicious pliability of language. "It is an old observation," he writes, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric." Yet he goes on to add this thought, which I urge you to consider: "Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules."

That's something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

A little arrogance (or even a lot) isn't such a bad thing, although your mother undoubtedly told you different. Mine did. "Pride goeth before a fall, Stephen", she said... and then I found out - right around the age that is 19 x 2 - that eventually you fall down, anyway.

...maybe the world needs a cadre of smartasses to liven things up, who knows?