Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.

I certainly know German colleagues in the US who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get married and become American citizens. But I've never tried that.

Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?

People who commit monstrous crimes are not necessarily monsters. If they were, things would be easy. But they aren't and it is one of the experiences of life.

I know that disavowal is an unusal form of betrayal. From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you're doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal.

There's this old saying that, if you aren't particularly gifted in natural sciences, if you don't want to become a teacher or pastor or doctor, and don't know what else to do, then you become a lawyer. But I've never regretted it.

Philosophy has forgotten about children