Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death — fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.

Ferber frames the writer’s vocation as an affair with life itself. If a writer truly loves writing, then even hardship becomes material rather than defeat: life may be “cruel” or “treacherous,” but it remains “fascinating” and “lavish” in the sense that it continually offers experience, character, conflict, and change. The metaphor of life as a lover also suggests intimacy and dependence—writers are bound to observe, suffer, delight, and endure in order to transform living into art. The finality of “until death” underscores that this relationship is lifelong, and that the writer’s resilience comes from converting whatever happens into language.