"After all, it's only your life"
“I never recall having an anger that brought words to flow like tears. First place, the words never flowed for me, out of emotion, and I never believe I ever got mad. In a sense, I suspect, I’m mad all the time. But it isn’t up where it interferes with my life. Nobody could get that mad about anything so long as he has a remnant of a sense of humor. Because I understood, a long time ago, so long ago I can’t remember where or how I first found it out, that it’s all a crazy sort of joke on us all; that there isn’t any true meaning to anything that won’t be untrue in half an hour, and if you can live through it you’re doing fine. If you can live through it, and have a few of the good things on the way- music, a girl, a sense of work that you like, then you’re as lucky as possible. I think that once you get rid of the notion that the world is going to hell unless you keep it from going there personally, you’re better off. It frees you to do and say what you think, to talk back and not fall for the hundred myths with which we’re deluded every day, and not to expect too much. After all, it’s only your life.”
-Letter from Nelson Algren, author of Man with the Golden Arm, to Joe Haas