I would rather do what I did than crawl in front of a ritualistic Left and lie the way those other comrades did betray my own soul.
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
I usually write away from home, in coffee shops, on trains, on planes, in friends' houses. I like places where there's stuff going on that you can lift your eyes, see something interesting, overhear a conversation.