Most self-laceration is more noisy than painful.

My mind no longer has romantic abysses, but has become shallow, with many little gaps and cracks.

By multiplying ironies, I evade commitments.

I answered my father's demands for sympathy with silence.

In the museums, everything is in quotation marks.

I feel affluent or not according to what part of town I am in.

The grand style is available now only in old poems, museums, and parodies.