Let us pause so that we may reflect.

From the Geoffrey Wolff's review of Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life (New York Times Book Review, 3/15/09):

[Bailey] sometimes bores right to the center of complex relationships, revealing their essence in a sentence, as when he explains Cheever’s reluctance to teach while working on a novel, resenting “distractions of any kind, especially the muddling static of apprentice prose." [Italics--it goes without saying--mine.]

On the other hand, I suppose that none of us wishes s/he were John Cheever, either.