All serious subjects, and particularly anything to do with myself, seem to me, almost as soon as they have been broached, to be not worth discussing after all

We were both reserved by nature, but Kini [Ella Maillart] was the less taciturn. I can only talk nonsense with fluency and conviction, for all serious subjects, and particularly anything to do with myself, seem to me, almost as soon as they have been broached, to be not worth discussing after all; in any case I talk badly. But Kini, in the mood, could talk extremely well and was not restrained from airing her opinions or recalling her past by any inhuman intimation that the former were worthless and the latter was a bore. This was a boon to me, for she had an interesting, rather barbarian mind, and her life had been lived in many places and all sorts of conditions.

P. Fleming, News from Tartary (1936), 173

Here the other side of the observation