“When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.”

“I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.”

“There isn't so much to be afraid of, out there. I can remember thinking it was funny to find that out, on the last night of my life; I'd spent the rest of it being afraid of everything.”

“I'd feel wasted and burnt, having wasted my time and my body and my energy and y words and my soul.”

“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”

“Today I know I was right. The adolescents of my generation, greedy for life, forgot in body and soul about their hopes for the future until reality taught them that tomorrow was not what they had dreamed, and they discovered nostalgia. My Sunday columns were there, life an archeological relic among the ruins of the past, and they realized they were not only for the old but also for the young who were not afraid of aging.”