Intention never aligns with result.

To fail better, to fail gracefully and with composure, is so essential because there’s no such thing as success. It’s failure all the way down.

Writing itself is failure. Even the successes are failures. In the best work, the intentions of the author fall away, leaving an open field for readers to play in, and they create meanings that may have nothing to do with the author’s. Jonathan Swift famously intended Gulliver’s Travels as an indictment of all humanity but ended up leaving a story for children. The joy of language is also a torment. “Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to,” Flaubert wrote, “while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” Nobody knows what they’re writing. Intention never aligns with result. You never know how readers will react. You never see how readers will react. It’s all what quantum physicists call “spooky action at a distance.” And here we come to the real crux of the matter at last: The spirit, and its daemon language, live in failure.

Stephen Marche