You become a parent, and your whole life becomes about worrying. You just worry constantly whether they’ll be okay. And the idea that I’ll be worried forever about them and what they do... I almost have a panic attack when I think about it. I’m worried, and I’m worried about having to worry so goddamn much.

There was nothing to confront here at this beach: no monsters, no past, no future. Everyone left him alone, the ultimate desire of any middle-aged man. The safety of it all wooed him. Coddled him.

My favorite part of the party is when the party is over. When I don’t feel obligated to have a good time, and I can just sit and chill with whoever’s left to chill with, you know?

She kept silent for fifty miles as he looked out his window at the last gasps of fall in the distant hills – pretty red and yellow swaths of foliage surrounded by sad patches of gray, like an unfinished oil painting.

You probably don’t remember that, do you? Depression has a way of vaporizing big parts of your memory. Important parts.

This is your life and the afterlife merged together in one perfect, endless existence.

The world changes, but people act the way people always do.

At 1 A.M. a parking garage feels like a crime scene in waiting.

I asked XMN if perhaps this is not the best way to spend one's time. I asked if it might be a symptom of a much deeper personal problem that he has failed to address. He thinks for a moment. "Yeah I'm sure that's part of it. Then again, I don't know if the problems I have can ever be fixed. I don't know how you go about being reborn into a family that loves you. I think I'm damaged permanently. And if that's the case, everyone else deserves the same fate.

You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still.