From “Master of Reality”

I got this calendar free with dinner at New China up on Foothill. They were giving them away if you ate there in January. One thing about me is that I always get maximum use out of free things. When the managers from around the country all went to San Diego for the region-wide management training summit, I kept all the soaps and shampoos from the hotel room they’d put me in. I also kept the toothpaste. And I didn’t keep them in a closet as a souvenir of the management training summit, either: I used them. I squeezed the toothpaste up from the bottom of the tube. I am like that. I think this is a positive personality trait, probably; I’d guess I have you to thank for it, though I don’t really feel thankful. I feel bad about not feeling thankful for something that’s essentially positive in my life, but since the positive thing feels like an involuntary twitch, why should I be thankful? It’s an endless loop.

–on the effects of spending your sixteenth and seventeenth years in involuntary psychiatric care