The knowledge that my discriminations are skewed and not always universally desirable doesn't stop me in the least from making them.

The essay must be artistically rendered: You must keep the reader engaged, whether with wit, conflict, mischief, and/or yes, with honesty.

Contradictory strands create an essay that's richly ambivalent.

The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.

I've had an enduring appreciation of psychology.

My wife and daughter have accused me of being too silent at breakfast but I don't want to talk when I don't have much to say.

I am apt to be harsh in my secret judgments of others, seeing them as defective because they are not enough like me.