If It Is Your Destiny to Be this Laborer Called a Writer

"Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama, you know, expecting victory after victory, and you understand deeply that this is not paradise, ... we somehow embrace the notion that this vale of tears, that it's perfectable, that you're gonna get it all straight.

I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. I tried to put this into that song called 'A Thousand Kisses Deep,' you know, where you understand that you abandon your masterpiece and you sink into the real masterpiece."

-- Leonard Cohen, from I'm Your Man