How many times his friends, envying him his life, had said to him: 'Your life is so simple.' 'Your life seems always to go in a straight line.' Whene… - Paul Bowles

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How many times his friends, envying him his life, had said to him: 'Your life is so simple.' 'Your life seems always to go in a straight line.' Whenever they said the words he heard in them an implicit reproach: it is not difficult to build a straight road on a treeless plain. He felt that what they really meant to say was: 'You have chosen the easiest terrain.' But if they elected to place obstacles in their own way — and they so clearly did, encumbering themselves with every sort of unnecessary allegiance — that was no reason why they should object to his having simplified his life.