He did not like to furnish autobiographical information, claiming: “Academics’ lives are seldom interesting.” His fingernails were extremely long, but when it was suggested that this was a sign of eccentricity, he replied, “I haven’t got the normal protective whorls, so that touching anything, especially fabric, causes such irritation that I need long nails to protect them.” In the same interview he said that the fact that he did not travel did not mean an absence of “inner journeys.”