A meal alfresco with people I love.

Perfect happiness is having a wife who loves you and doesn’t ask for too much jewelry.

Wow, these are big questions! Happiness, as I’ve experienced it and observed it in others, seems to be random—some of us are happy fairly regularly (I am, mostly), and some of us not as much—but there seems to be no clear explanation as to why. It comes and goes at unexpected moments, too. The graph of happiness doesn’t even seem to match what is going on in our lives. Or maybe it does and we don’t know it. Money—is there a connection between money and happiness? It takes away a world of worries and anxieties, but are rich folks all happy? Are you kidding? Donald Trump is ALWAYS scowling. That said, it’s hard to be happy if you don’t know where you’ll sleep or where your next meal is coming from. The pursuit of happiness? Where are we supposed to look? Are there clues hidden somewhere? The very act of searching and striving for it can lead to frustration and unhappiness. I suspect that happiness finds you—I’m not sure you can find a road that leads to it. Happiness is everywhere, though some cultures are, I’ve read, happier overall than others—G.N.P. be damned. Is sunshine one of those things? Are tropical folks generally happier?

Floating on my back in the ocean.

Collapse of the imagination.

The artist Gerhard Richter.

Tramping through the woods in South Jersey in 1957 with my dog Bambi.

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work and protect your work. […] Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.

I would love to have a better sense of physical balance.