Writing should be a little bit grainy, it should be a little bit raw. It should be every single thing flowing inside of us, and most of it isn’t pretty. If there is nothing at stake in what I’m reading, if there is nothing at stake for the writer, I am just not interested. You gotta be there. You have to basically bleed for it. If not, why are you trying to put this in the world.

I think our souls are always being hole-punched, like old train tickets. In the end, we’re all perforated. If we were buckets, we wouldn’t hold water.

What happened in the bar doesn’t matter anymore. None of that matters. It’s already the past and the past is dead. It’s a shed skin. The present is worthless. It’s just a thin membrane between the death of the past and the endless offerings for living in the future. I pick the future.

I tend books the way someone in an aviary tends birds.

What if there is this time bomb to love. What if it’s like you fall in love with so many people who just aren’t for you, and with each one, your heart toughens up, and you have to find the one who is right for you before your heart is completely calcified in your chest.

You’re breaking up with me because I’m not a successful guitarist, and because I seem like I’m just a guy handing out pamphlets on a street corner! You’re disgusted.” This is why Adrian is disgusted with Adrian and has nothing to do with me. Very little of our relationship has much to do with me, which is one of the actual reasons I’m breaking up with him. He loves me but doesn’t really understand me – so, in effect, does he really love me?

I’m alive. This might be the first time I’ve ever really been alive in my whole fucking miserable life. This moment is what causes wars to start. The only books worth reading have been written about those lips.

What happened in the bar doesn't matter anymore. None of that matters. It's already the past and the past is dead. It's a shed skin. The present is worthless. It's just a thin membrane between the death of the past and the endless offerings for living in the future. I pick the future.

Books can break a man open, even ones about a panda, maybe especially so.

As a kid, I went to the library because, in books, there were people really living lives, and unlike my parents, they talked to me about important things.