Paul Greer: Less

Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world.

(p 44) 

One of the primary problems of most of my life. Too fearful not only to be achieving things, too fearful even to have leisure and fun.

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And yet he is somehow deflated. To travel to the other side of the world - only to be offered a brand he could so easily buy at home.

(about Less, p 201) 

One of my disappointments after arriving in Glasgow was the number of Poles. Not for some ethnic reason, but because I'd grown up near enough to Poland's border to watch its TV - if I wanted to hear more Polish, I hadn't had to move a thousand miles.

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He is remembering (falsely) something Robert once told him: Boredom is the only real tragedy for a writer; everything else is material. Robert never said anything of the sort. Boredom is essential for writers; it is the only time they get to write.

(about Less, p 203) 

I'm just a blogger, but this applies to me as well: either there's nothing much to blog about, or there's so much happening I don't have the time to blog about it while it's still fresh in my mind.

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Your way of going through the world, unaware of danger.  Clumsy and naive. Of course I envied you. Because I could never be that; I'd stopped being that when I was a kid.

(Carlos Pelu to Arthur Less, p 224)

What I said above, and it really was like that from my early childhood. Either my parents warned me too much against various dangers; or I took their warnings too literally and/or seriously; or indeed, both.