Sublime

I wondered: why me?

is good-looking in the vaguely unreal way soap opera actors and models in Sears catalogues are good-looking.

Do not discount the psychic warmth of the hive.

She thought of him as a source of knowledge rather than experience; a good, though not contemporary mind, a person rather than a man.

as in musical chairs when there’s one fewer seat than there are humans who need it, but so long as the music plays the number of seats is immaterial and everyone is still in the game.

It seems it would follow that writers—so familiar with empty time and with being alone—should manage this situation better than most. Instead, in the first week I found out how much of my old life was about hiding from life. Confronted with the problem of life served neat, without distraction or adornment or superstructure, I had almost no idea of

Author Zadie Smith says, “Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.”