Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing – for life itself is a writer’s love until death.
Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.
Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!