Diaries, biographies, autobiographies . . . they make one realize how egregiously stolid, unenterprising, faint-hearted and insensitive one is. One neglected to sleep with one's mother or father, one omitted to seduce one's psychoanalyst (one omitted to acquire a psychoanalyst), one failed to engage in love-triangles or quadrangles with famous figures (perhaps one knew no famous figures), one shirked having an abortion in a backstreet, one never came into money suddenly, one never found oneself literally penniless (only metaphorically). Can one belong to the same species, one asks oneself. One doesn't even keep a diary.

- D.J. Enright