Whenever someone says he doesn't take himself too seriously you can be absolutely certain that he does take himself too seriously, because in order to make such an assessment he would've needed to think very hard about what counts as too seriously and what counts as just seriously enough, without crossing the line, and he would've had to examine himself and his feelings in order to judge just where his level of self-seriousness falls, on the bad side of the line or the acceptable side, and in doing so, by doing what's necessary to make the determination, he would've become self-absorbed to such a preposterous degree that to then breezily announce that he doesn't take himself too seriously (which is just a sort of back door boast anyway when you think about it) would be to utter an obvious falsehood, and so it would be clearly true to anyone within earshot—even to people clear across the room who hadn't been following the conversation but just heard that one little bit—that he not only takes him too seriously but that he is also a liar, or at the very least untrustworthy, and possibly self-deluded, perhaps only to the degree to which everyone is self-deluded, about one thing or another, about their hair or intelligence say, but just perhaps self-deluded in a more severe way, a deeply disturbing way, a dangerously pathological or even criminal way, who knows? I am by nature an optimist which means that I do not see myself as half dead but rather as half alive.