Truly decent, innocent people can be taxing to be around.

I'm screaming for help and everybody's acting as if I'm singing Ethel Merman covers.

At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over. It is Nielsen ratings and Barnum's axiom and the real bottom line. It is big, big business.

I had, by thirteen, developed a sort of Taoist hubris about my ability to control via non-control.

Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.

Why not? Why not?Why not not, then, if the best reasoning you can contrive is why not?

The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct.