I wonder if I agree with the 2 weeks thing.

“To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don’t read the novel really. So I think that kind of concentration and focus and attentiveness is hard to come by - it’s hard to find huge numbers of people, large numbers of people, significant numbers of people, who have those qualities.”

There’s something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia, that disabuses you of the belief in externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth and checking the items off the list, one by one, even though it’s painful and you’re afraid.

“What makes us feel liberated is not total freedom, but rather living in a set of limitations that we have created and prescribed for ourselves,”