My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am. - Susan Sontag

And isn't it usually so, that lovers who share their daily lives with each other gradually find they need to put very little into words?

Yes, this is Europe. The Europe that did not respond to the Serb shelling of Dubrovnik. Or the three-year siege of Sarajevo. The Europe that let Bosnia die. A new definition of Europe: the place where tragedies don't take place. Wars, genocides — that happened here once, but no longer. It's something that happens in Africa. (Or places in Europe that are not "really" Europe. That is, the Balkans.) Again, perhaps I exaggerate. But having spent a good part of three years, from 1993 to 1996, in Sarajevo, it does not seem to me like an exaggeration at all.

Don't be too hard on the envious. Be glad you have, or had in the past, something enviable.