If he would just take a plunge (always the Realtor’s fondest wish for mankind), banish fear, let loose the reins, think that instead of having suffered error and loss he’d survived them and that today is the first day of his new life, then he’d be fine and dandy. In other words, embrace in full the permanent period of life, live not as though he were going to die tomorrow but as though he might live.

Richard Ford, The Shore, The New Yorker, August 2, 2004