I hate myself because I am not beautiful.

The neighbors really grew to hate the Presleys,

I have had a love-hate relationship with my body.

I believed that inside every fat person was a hole the size of the world; I believed that every fat person wanted to fill that hole by eating the world. It wasn't enough to eat food. You had to swallow air, you had to chew up everyone who got near you. No wonder, I thought, that nobody liked me or liked me all that much.

The level of work is just terrific. Perkins' annual photograph exhibition has peculiar prestige. The quality of work just keeps going up.

Narrators of first-person claptrap like this often greet the reader at the door with moist hugs and complaisant kisses. I won't. I will not endear myself.