I think somehow you need to get to a certain point in your life where the notion of failure is absurd.

Don't come home a failure.

The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.

I've become a professional failure - in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily, a disaster always seems to befall me at exactly the right moment.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.