The early family skiing holidays – before I’d broken an ankle and Gerald had torn a ligament – were just wonderful.

On my wedding day.

When I was 15 and starting my first job as a messenger boy at the post office, delivering telegrams.

When I was little kid, before I knew what worrying was about.

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.

I’ve turned down opportunities constantly. I turn down invitations to do things for money. I have almost no interest in making money.

If I had a trait that I truly deplored, I would work to erase or modify it…Probably, a lack of discipline. (Though people think that I write quickly, & don’t revise, quite the reverse is true.) To myself, I work very slowly & painstakingly, & am often frustrated by accomplishing so little. My friend Margaret Atwood has said that in the late afternoon she is likely to be overcome by a feeling of desperation that she has accomplished so little that day, & this is a feeling I share, often. It seems that I waste most of my time gazing out the window here at my (overgrown) garden; & when I am in Berkeley, where I spend about one-third of the year, I am forever gazing out the window toward the San Francisco Bay & a continually changing, always-beautiful sky.

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.

“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.

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.