The double life of the writer

I wrote out of desperation. In the great turmoil and gloom and euphoria of adolescence, I found there was nowhere to express the chaos of emotions I was feeling, nowhere but in words. I began to rely so much on writing that I was living a double life—one in the world and one on the page. The one on the page was more intense, more satisfying and for a long time much more real.

--Susan Minot, “A Real-Life Education,” in The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work, p. 50.