“All of us know — we almost expect — that an artist will use up everyone he meets in the hope that the payoff in the public sphere will make up for casualties in the private. Even those of us without such gifts find it hard to serve two masters. Years ago, when I began writing, I noticed that the writing life and the happy (you could even say, the good) life lay in opposite directions. For the former I would have to take myself away from much that I cared about, and give myself over to the dark spaces in the world (and in the self) that I, like most of us, would rather look away from. Writing feeds on the tension — even the tragedy — that a happy life aspires to see beyond.”
—Pico Iyer, “Art of Darkness”