When your son is healthy and happy, you're healthy and happy. And when your son is not healthy, let's say you're unhappy.
It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.
For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.
As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.
Obviously loss of family is huge and critical, but I think really it's more about losing a sense of family. The horror of that kind of incompleteness. Writing this book, I tried not to think about my father, which does no one any good fictionally. I did try to imagine not just the horror of that moment, but the horror of having witnessed it, and the lifelong void. And I think that's what's so frightening.
The truth, finally, is who can tell it.
So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.
The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other.
You want to be free as the ego, but you need to be free FROM the ego. To be free from it is to understand its unreality.
I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief.
I cling to my anger with every ounce of humanity left in my ruined body, but it's no use. It slips away, like a wave from shore. I am pondering this sad fact when I realize the blackness of sleep is circling my head. It's been there awhile, biding it's time and growing closer with each revolution. I give up on rage, which at this point has become a formality, and make a mental note to get angry again in the morning. Then I let myself drift, because there's really no fighting it.