The Anatomy Lesson

N. as in Nostalgia.

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la dirrita via era smarrita." Dante

"It is good thing in the winter to be deep in the snow, in the autumn deep in the yellow leaves, in the summer among the ripe corn, in spring amid the grass." Van Gogh

Whatever darkness was behind them, it was explained to them by the psychiatrist. And now for them it's all recovery. Make my life meaningful. Growth. They buy this. Some of them, the smart ones, they sell it.

Monstrous that all the world's suffering is good to me inasmuch as it's grist to my mill, that all I can do, when confronted with anyone's story, is to wish to turn it into material, but if that's the way one is possessed, that is the way one is possessed. There's a demonic side to this business that the Nobel Prize committee doesn't talk much about.

Writing the last page of a book was as close as he'd ever come to sublimity

He taught them The Poetics, The Oresteia, Passage to India, The Alchemist, Portrait of the Artist, King Lear, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, taught them all like holy books.

So far, this conversation has just been depressing. Now it's idiotic.

Let's face it, even the worst criticism contains some truth.

Laughing she looked like someone who'd seen it all and emerged unscathed

Life and art are distinct, thought Zuckerman, what could be clearer? Yet the distinction is wholly elusive. That writing is an act of imagination seems to perplex and infuriate everyone.