I have a child-like fear of being late. I’m a grown man, and I’m scared I’m going to the principal’s office.

The fact that sometimes my mouth is a little too big and a little too open and sounds too much like a sailor.

I can’t cook. I use my smoke alarm as a timer.

Deplore is a heavy word. I don’t deplore it but I constantly feel the pull of my old Midwestern ways of eating. Boy, can I put some pancakes away.

Sometimes, it is the possibility of loneliness. Other times, it is the possibility of never being alone, having no privacy, being under the control of another.

On two dates: 23 January 1961 and 13 March 2009 (my two weddings).

And so I finally felt that I’d given up. ... And towards the morning, I started thinking, “Well, failure is actually what most people experience in boxing.” ... And I found a way to write about the whole sport by way of beginning with failure, with the image of failure.

“Perfect happiness!”—waking in the morning to a clear & benevolent-seeming sky, a view from a window of a beautiful (if overgrown) garden, a cat purring. The excitement of rewriting the previous day’s work, & continuing on from that point energized & hopeful. For a writer, “happiness” isn’t likely to ever be “perfect”—but it is likely to be bound up with the work-in-progress. First drafts tend to be frustrating, exhausting—subsequent drafts sometimes move swiftly, even miraculously. For most adults, “Perfect is the enemy of good”—we learn to appreciate whatever measure of happiness we have, however modest.

Amid so much blatant cruelty in our political situation, such shocking indifference to the lives & welfare of those living at the margins of an affluent society, I think it must be this institutionalized cruelty, & the hypocrisy that surrounds it. “Making America great again”—for whom? Wealthy white people? The word “deplore” is particularly relevant here.

“Most admiring” an individual may depend upon knowing her—or him—only at a distance. Public personalities may be the easiest to admire, for obvious reasons. Michelle Obama has seemed to me enormously admirable, like President Obama. And—of course!—Oprah, a great American original. Among people whom I know personally, & have known for some time, Gloria Vanderbilt is most admirable. There are too many things to say about Gloria to fit this space—& indeed I have said a good deal about Gloria in the past—but she is one of the most remarkable persons of my acquaintance. Equally admirable, among my friends who are “known” to the public, whom nonetheless I know as individuals, is Steve Martin, remarkable also for the diversity of his talent(s). But what is most impressive about Steve is that, greatly gifted as he is in comedy, his comic vision is essentially unifying—radiantly goofy, never injurious to anyone. It has become a rare comedy that doesn’t trade upon marginalizing & insulting others & it is really quite remarkable how through his long career Steve has never insulted, hurt, or objectified anyone else for the sake of laughter.