Sanity ... is the most profound moral option of our time.

Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative "criticism" isn't criticism at all: it's just nasty, "writerly" cliché and invective.

I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.

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.

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

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

I took a little celebrational nap.