The problem with making a virtual world of oneself is akin to the problem with projecting ourselves onto a cyberworld: there’s no end of virtual spaces in which to seek stimulation, but their very endlessness, the perpetual stimulation without satisfaction, becomes imprisoning.

He had a happy canine way of seeking approval without seeming insecure.

But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.

For every reader who dies today, a viewer is born, and we seem to be witnessing . . . the final tipping balance.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

Without privacy there was no point in being an individual.

Popularity has become its own justification.