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Only an idiot wouldn’t be depressed, I think, and it makes me smile.

Depression keeps me from writing and tells me to blame everything else.

After I give a reading, a worried teenager asks, Do you think you’re a good writer?

People ask, What are you depressed about? But there is no about.

Crossing an ocean is a good metaphor for reading a book, but it’s not a good metaphor for writing one unless the crossing takes place before the age of astronomy, and the captain is ready to fall off the edge of the world.

Having nothing to write isn’t writer’s block. It’s just the dormant phase of the work. I used to write all through this phase, and it looked like productivity. It wasn’t.

The concept of writer’s block depends on the assumption that whatever you’re producing, it’s not enough.

I need to insulat…

You give up your job to move somewhere for your spouse’s job, which pays better than yours ever will, so the marriage wins. It happens five times in a row, in five consecutive years. You’d never have agreed to this, but the marriage keeps winning! The trick is to train yourself to value the marriag…

On an autumn afternoon we sat in the back seat of a small car. There were too many people in the back seat. Our legs touched. Hello, he said. My left side burned. I can feel the pressure of his body, all our clothes between us. I’ve been trying to write about this for thirty years.

I want to dig…