Maybe Love, Like Suffering, Is

I Think At A Certain Point The Book Develops A Certain Weight, Or Pressure. You've Been Pushing The Rock Up The Hill For A Long Time And Then It Starts To Roll And Things Do Start To Come Together In The Last Two Thirds.

I'd Read An Enormous Amount But Had Spent So Much Time In My Own Head That I Didn't Have Extensive Social Skills. Suddenly I Was In This World Where I Was Surrounded By These Incredibly Polished And Wealthy Kids Who Had Gone To Prep Schools, And I Felt Daunted By Them. I Don't Think People Were Aware Of How Full Of Anxiety I Was... For A Long Time I Felt Like I Was Living In A Place Where I Shouldn't Have Been.

I Usually Have More Than One Thing I'm Working On At Once -- I've Been Working On Three Different Novels. When I Get Stuck On One, I Hop Back And Forth. It's Sort Of Freeing: I Can Say I'm Abandoning This Thing That I Hate Forever And I'm Moving On To Something That's Good. I'll Find That I'll Go Back To [the Other Project] In A Day Or A Week And Like It Again. But That Moment Of Wanting To Trash Something -- That Virginia Woolf Moment When You Have To Be Stopped From Filling Your Pocket With Stones -- Comes Pretty Regularly For Me. Switching Is Probably A Good Thing.

So This Was What It Felt Like To Lose Yourself. Again. To Let Go Of Your Future And Let It Rise Up And Up Until Finally You Couldn't See It Anymore, And You Knew That You Had To Start Over.

You Know, The Biggest Indicator Of Where You Live Is Your Income. If You Live In This Suburb You Make This Much Money, And If You Live In That Suburb, You Make That Much Money, And If You Don't Have Any Money You Live Where You're Allowed To Live.