"The Pleasures of a Nonconformist"

[fiefoe]

"How I Bought a Toothbrush":
    We shook hands warmly, but desolately, like two souls who, between themselves, shared the secret of the universe.

"I Adore Postscripts": 
    If letters are the most personal form of writing, postscripts are the most personal parts of the letters. They contain all the irrelevancies, the intimacies, the afterthoughts and indiscretions and corrections of indiscretions which fill up our life. ... A letter is a soliloquy, but a letter with a postscript is a conversation.
    The world's best and worst resolutions are always made at the last moment.

"On Political Sickness":
    Suppose you become the Minister of Navy... it is ten to one that you will not be able to build that fine navy of yours without having diabetes or a significant collection of gallstones, or insomnia (preferably with capital letters). If you don't... Says the Minister of Finance, "If you insist on building that navy of yours... I will have a weak heart and resign." What are you going to do then? But suppose you are armed with three gallstones or even one, you can easily reply, 'But unless you give me money for the navy, I am going to have a gallstone," and you have the Minister of Finance properly silenced and put in his place.

"The Crushed Fender School of Art":
    (The asylum resident) reassured me. "You don't suppose that I just threw the bed sheet there without thought as to the incidence of light, the emotive, evocative power, and the transcendental juxtapostion of the modulated cotton texture contrasting with the black, hard, wrought-iron surface of the bed end, do you?"  {Word for word, this matches the commentary by a giant all-black painting at Harvard's Busch-Reisinger Museum beautifully.}

"Do it Yourself":
    I carve wood and plastic. I do plastic embedding of seashells.
    It does not do to be a grandfather and wash the kitchen floor or... then go and make the tea yourself. Where is the dignity, the poise, the godlike wisdom? It jars upon the whole concept of a Chinese grandfather.