People are like jigsaw puzzles, but just when you’re thinking the picture has come together seamlessly and everything fits, there is always an additional piece that does not fit anywhere into your picture.

The people I don’t know well, whom I form quick impressions of and make quick judgments about, are like relatively simple jigsaw puzzles – until and unless I receive new pieces, which always come if I have ongoing exposure to a person.

The people I’ve known for decades are far more complex puzzles and – having worked so hard and so long to put together a masterfully coherent picture – I sometimes don’t even notice when the new pieces come in, because they make things way too complicated.

Famous people are kind of like baby jigsaw puzzles with big, crude pieces that form an obvious picture – although they too may keep adding pieces if I care to look or if they get enough press coverage. But still – very large, crudely simple pieces.

And I suppose I’m a jigsaw puzzle too, though I never for a moment really think I can clarify that picture. I have too much self-respect, or self-regard, however you want to put it, to imagine I can be figured out, calcified, locked into shape. I’m way too vast (and “I contain multitudes” to complete the Whitman quote). So I never look at myself as a puzzle really. Other people are puzzles. I am a fluid process.