Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.
“But when I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.”
“Tis this desire of bending all things to our own purposes which turns them into confusion and is the chief source of every error in our lives.”