I'm the kind of person, if, if I have a day that is nerve-wracking, or my week has been bad or something's going down, I won't eat. Some people eat, I don't eat. And it shows in my physical frame. ↗
In grammar school some of the girls had problems with me. My face was too light. My hair was too long. It was the black-consciousness period, and I felt really bad. ↗
My dad's more three-dimensional than Opie Taylor or Richie Cunningham. He even has a temper! He's a real person. But some people are disappointed by that. ↗
Parents, however old they and we may grow to be, serve among other things to shield us from a sense of our doom. As long as they are around, we can avoid the fact of our mortality; we can still be innocent children. ↗
But the idea of a man making his living by writing seemed, in that hardy environment, so fantastic that even today I am sometimes myself assailed by a feeling of unreality. ↗
And when I stopped doing that and started thinking about what feels natural and what feels right to me and started pleasing myself, then it became good. ↗