For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write - like myself - college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.

Nonfiction writers are second-class citizens, the Ellis Island of literature. We just can't quite get in. And yes, it pisses me off.

Writing is a form of self-flagellation.

In the absence of hope we must still struggle to survive, and so we do-by the skin of our teeth.

Depression...so mysteriously painful and elusive.

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.

For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write - like myself - college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.