Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
"I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."
Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle, and best at the end.
A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection — unless you lie — in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.
The past is a shadow that follows us, a ghost that haunts us.