He would come to feel that history, even more than memory, distorts the present of the past by focusing on big events and making one forget that most people living in the present are otherwise preoccupied, that for them omens often don't exist.

Outside, the afternoon sun was an orange sliver on an icy horizon.

... "You may not see the ocean, but right now we are in the middle of the ocean, and we have to keep swimming.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

How to preside over your own internal disorder? Finding the "I" that can represent the pack of you is the first challenge of the memoirist.

When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.