Flaubert's Parrot

by Julian Barnes

Secondly, when readers complain about the lives of writers – why didn’t he do this; why didn’t he protest to the newspapers about that; why wasn’t he more involved in life? – aren’t they really asking a simpler, and vainer, question: why isn’t he more like us? But if a writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer: it’s as uncomplicated as that.

When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret.