Realism absorbs the ideal by adding a few small imperfections. Example: it paints a few specks of mud on the white gown of the Lady in the Garden.
The more powerless people are, the longer they are kept waiting.
Conformity makes everything easier, if you can still breathe.
Disappointment proves that expectations were mistaken.
We express disappointment in everything except ourselves.
I feel disappointed, but I don’t remember just what I expected.
Being cultured is the least expensive form of respectability.
As night falls, every joy glows brighter.
Progress may feel more like loss than gain.
My secrets are petty but humiliating.
In New York, pretending to be above the struggle means no seat on the bus and a table next to the kitchen.
New York loves itself in an unkind and fanatical way.
Why is it forbidden in New York to acknowledge the charm and beauty of Los Angeles?
In New York, one must collapse to be indolent.
I create my social existence by earning and spending.
Self-satisfaction and self-pity are both condemned. What are people permitted to feel about themselves?
Self-realization sounds good. But what if only an enraged dwarf emerges?
People are not the way they are primarily in order to annoy me.
Self-analysis always cheats.
I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.
When I go out, I hope to leave the worst of myself at home.