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

I've had an enduring appreciation of psychology.

... I vowed that I would always respect the right of an individual to kill himself. Whether suicide was a moral or immoral act I no longer felt sure, but of the dignity of its intransigence I was convinced.

Contradictory strands create an essay that's richly ambivalent.

I really do like to write and when I'm not, I think, "Okay, I'll be a good citizen now" but fact is, that's secondary.

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.