Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste.

–Patricia Hampl, in Janet Sternburg, ed., The Writer on Her Work, vol. 2 (1991)

We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they run up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

–Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)