The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers all alone in their studios with no one watching.
Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparently one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that the state is acting not only on behalf of society but also on behalf of the murdered person and the murdered person's family.