wordings

"It was a fifteen-minute streetcar ride to Harvard Square, where on Saturdays I would go to absorb its intellectual, folksy ambiance. I'd sit for hours in a cafe with a pen & a notebook, writing about the human complexities that threatened to flatten me. Helen did not have the sanctuary of notebooks. Writing about her life would have meant acknowledging it."

taken from a book or a magazine or a newspaper article I've long since forgotten the name of.