I concluded that the best thing for me and for those around me was to want nothing, to be enthusiastic about nothing, to be as unmotivated as possible, in fact, so that I would never again hurt anyone.

My generation's apathy. I'm disgusted with it. I'm disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whinning about for years.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

Give into hope, I say, for fear will only paralyze. It is better to life a life of love amidst the pain than a life of apathy.

The real fear is an extended outage. We have notable capacity reductions in the U.S. Gulf Coast production, refining and distribution system.

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.