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

There are times when every act, no matter how private and unconscious, becomes political.

That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.

The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.

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

Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.

The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress.