“I want to finish what I started, Bob.”
“That’s a lousy reason. Try again.”
“I need to make a living that’s not in business. I hate being a businessman, Bob.”
“So be a lawyer. Be a doctor. You’ll make more money. It’s not easy to get a job as a professor these days, Clancy.”
“It’s the one thing I really enjoyed. Philosophy was the only thing that ever truly interested me. And I have some things I want to figure out.”
“Now you’re talking. Like what? What are you thinking about?”
“Lying. Or failure. I feel like I know a lot about both of them right now.”
(I was writing a long essay about suicide, which, come to think of it, might have been more to the point at the time. But I didn’t want to scare him off.)
A beat.
“Nobody wants to read about failure. It’s too depressing. But lying is interesting. Deception? Or self-deception? Or, I’m guessing, both?”
“Exactly. Both. How they work together.”