Pillows, small rugs, watercolors can dispel much of the chilling anonymity of a sublet apartment or motel room.

But very often, a writer can appear to stand aside, and this detachment makes people feel: there's a bit of ice in the heart.

I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness-that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable abyss.