I still partially suffer from the delusion that if you explain things logically and systematically, most people will abandon their emotional prejudices and respond to logic. But I don't suffer from that delusion as wholeheartedly as I did in the past. So if there's a fundamental difference, it's that I've accepted the fact that most imbeciles will never 'get' me and I shouldn't allow myself to get so upset about it.

I still partially suffer from the delusion that if you explain things logically and systematically, most people will abandon their emotional prejudices and respond to logic. But I don't suffer from that delusion as wholeheartedly as I did in the past. So if there's a fundamental difference, it's that I've accepted the fact that most imbeciles will never 'get' me and I shouldn't allow myself to get so upset about it.

Nowadays, you suffer the same risks - ostracism, career loss, possible assault - for being perceived as racist that you would have encountered a century ago for daring to question racist ideology.

The criticism that has most consistently bothered me is the allegation that I'm a schlockmeister whose only objective is to shock people.

I'm still an obsessive personality, and I still think I'm right, and I still believe my literary balls hang far lower than nearly anyone else's alive.

the fact that they stole their whole shtick from Woody Guthrie and the coal-mining bards. While the alternative nation meows about personal fashion angst, the Appalachian nation still sings about unemployment.

I don't think fatherhood's changed me so much as it's conjured protective instincts I've had all along.