Maybe writers disimprove as they age, because they live with the permanent fear that the gift has gone. It gets worse with age. What happens in youth and then in mid-life…the spasms of…you know,  the famous cliché, “the blank page” happens, but then one morning the writer gets up and thinks, “Ah, one line, just one line, and off you are.” It doesn’t happen as much in old age. It does not. Only by sheer perseverance.

EDNA O’BRIEN