The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.

Still, there's that faint glimmer of hope we feel when we sense, in other people, the same kind of attentiveness to life that we take comfort in. Why else would anyone watch Haneke films or read Sebald? The material is grim, but it's redeemed by the quality of the attention.

Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not villains of our own stories.

I couldn't remember what life was like before I started walking.

The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

I'm not hopeful about America, and I'm not hopeful about the world, no. Life goes on and, for those of us who are lucky, there's a great deal to enjoy in it. But will things get better for most people? I don't know. I don't see the evidence.

I suddenly feel a vague pity for all those writers who have to ply their trade from sleepy American suburbs, writing divorce scenes symbolized by the very slow washing of dishes.