I sometimes visualize meeting one person as the equivalent of meeting the Ocean’s 11 crew together at once, wrapped up in one human envelope—we each have distinct parts, and we tell a story to ourselves and the world that they are a coherent whole, but depending on the context different parts step forward into the light on the stage.
“The best protection is always to be working on hard problems. Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn’t. Hard means worry: if you’re not worrying that something you’re making will come out badly, or that you won’t be able to understand something you’re studying, then it isn’t hard enough. There has to be suspense”