"But he had to admit his tendency to self-pitying flippancy - the barbed inward-turning verbal projectile - held little allure for him now, had held less and less than in his sarcastic college years. Then, of course, arrogance and earnest self-regard mingled with raw disdain. Increasingly, it took energy to inject comments with bile, mainly because he no longer felt it, and life-as-hissy-fit had grown tiresome. Even for the child of self-dramatizing actors, the fungible persona - a different face for a different room - was not attractive." From: the inadvertent headshot, by Robert J. Hughes