I took a little celebrational nap.

My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.

Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn't remember it, but if they had done it, or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether.

It is always self-defeating to pretend to the style of a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.

Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.