"Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space."

"Quick. Name ten dead redheads."

"If your life had lyrics, would they be any good?"

"The universe hands you opportunities for a while, and if you don't take them, the universe says to itself, 'Oh I see, this person doesn't like opportunities' and stops giving them to you."

"Tofu hot dogs are actually scarier than real hot dogs. It's like wanting the worst possible meat product without even the thrill of it actually being meat."

"If our subconscious was attractive, we wouldn't have to bury it down deep within us."

"We're rapidly approaching a world comprised entirely of jail and shopping."

"Jason once told me that eye contact is the most intimacy two people can have -- forget sex -- because the optic nerve is technically an extension of the brain, and when two people look into each other's eyes, it's brain-to-brain."

"Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being."

"Humans are part of nature, and nature is one great big wood chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones, and hair."

"Worrying about money is one of the worst worries. It's like having locked-in syndrome, except you're still moving around and doing things. Your head burns. If other people are not having money problems, it pisses you off because it reminds you that you're limited in the ways you can express your agency in the world, and they aren't. Worrying about money is anger-inducing because it makes you think about time: how many dollars per hour, how much salary per year, how many years until retirement. Worrying about money forces you to do endless math in your head, and most people didn't like math in high school and they don't like it now."

"We can no longer create the feeling of an era...of time being particular to one spot in time."

"In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves."

"The harder you try to become the opposite of your parents, the more quickly you become them."

"You can only fall in love six times in your life. Choose wisely."

"Nostalgia for the 20th century brain helps nobody."

"If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it."

"We were never supposed to live until 40. We were built to self-destruct at 30, whether from cancer or mental illness. We're all going way beyond our expiration date."

"Nature is one great big wood-chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones and hair."

"It's difficult to speak with beautiful people. No matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise, you still want them to like you."

"New York is a theme park for people with IQs over 108."

"Flying dreams mean that you're doing the right thing with your life."

"And his computer's spell-check always forces him to capitalize the word "Internet". Come on; World War Two earned it's capitalization. The Internet just sucks human beings away from reality."

"High school is such a shared experience in North American culture."

"Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them."

"Everybody past a certain age, regardless of how they look on the outside, pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives."

"The richness of the rain made me feel safe and protected; I have always considered the rain to be healing-a blanket-the comfort of a friend. Without at least some rain in any given day, or at least a cloud or two on the horizon, I feel overwhelmed by the information of sunlight and yearn for the vital, muffling gift of falling water."

"You've seen what you've seen you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world."

"I decided at 40 I was wasting entire chunks of my brain and didn't want to blow my one chance on Earth. I'm glad I made that decision. Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space. Sometimes, as with film, you can hybridize, but I think it's basically the space part of my brain wanting equal footing with the time part."

"It's weird when people start sentences with 'frankly' - as if their other sentences don't count."

"Sometimes failure isn't an opportunity in disguise, it's just you."

"A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age ... pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, Ann-Margret, the cat members of Rent, Václav Havel, space shuttle astronauts and Snuffleupagus. It's universal."

"Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony."

"Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence."

"There's nothing cure or funny or lovable about being cheap. It's a total turn-off."

"Feeling unique is no indication of uniqueness."

"I know it's not cat food, but what exactly is it that they put inside of tinned ravioli?"

"There are three things we cry about in life, things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent."

"It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations."

"The modern economy isn't about the redistribution of wealth, it's about the redistribution of time."

"Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries."

"I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life, like radioactive elements."

"Depression is when you have lots of love, but no one's taking."

"Or maybe memories are like karaoke - where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't even know the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of its full meaning - and you read more into it than maybe existed in the first place. I think it's better not to know the lyrics to your life."

"It also allows you to look as though you're not particularly from the present, future or past, either."

"There's much to be said for feeling numb. Time passes more quickly. You eat less, and because numbness encourages laziness, you do fewer things, good or bad, and the world's probably a better place for it."

"Your ability to rationalize your own bad deeds makes you believe that the whole world is as amoral as you are."

"Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code?"

"Life is boring. People are vengeful. Good things always end. We do so many things and we don't know why, and if we do find out why, it's decades later and knowing why doesn't matter any more."

"Birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain."