It was on a train in the middle of the night from Lisbon to Madrid that I started to read The Year of Magical Thinking. In it, Joan Didion said that one characteristic of successful people is that they believe anything can be resolved with a phone call, or a letter or a visit to the right person. They do not take “no” for an answer. It’s not stubborn or arrogant; it’s that “no” just doesn’t happen to them that often, so when it does, they don’t take it seriously…