I think what it takes to succeed remains the same. You have to have a real love of your sport to carry you through all the bad times, you still want to go ski even when things aren't working. You must have a commitment to work hard and to never give up. ↗
I've had a bad time, which we won't dwell on. We were married and we worked together for 52 years, and suddenly with her gone I was a quadriplegic. Slowly I'm crawling back. ↗
In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the shame of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold. ↗
Sure, I've had some bad times, but everybody does. But people don't get to talk about them like I do, unless they do to a therapist. People don't get to put them in the paper like I do. ↗
The comments I most appreciate come from ordinary readers who've happened on one of my books at some time of stress in their lives, and who actually credit the book with helping them through a bad time. It's happened a few times in forty years. ↗