Category: text

Still clinging to that imagined professional status, 30 years past its sell date.

He operated in the margin between artist, teacher, and activist—that is to say grifter.

Her notebooks were so much better than her novels or short stories. Why did anyone write fiction?

He’d given up hope long ago. The problem was that it kept coming back.

Lost in a forest of assumptions.

In times of upheaval, objects and beings are more stable resting on their balance points than on their bases.
Surf’s up.

In the mirror was the face of someone who didn’t know what had hit him—and until that moment hadn’t even known anything had.

Be the love you never received.

Memory will have to suffice.

Should: a stupid word for stupid people.

The things that always made me cringe are what I miss the most. Awkward or naive comments that were evidence of her sweet nature, eager to engage, that I wish I had embraced.

The ego has 100,000 tricks, and once you’ve learned them, 100,000 more.

He survived by expecting almost nothing while accepting almost everything.

The black market for celebrity ashes.

Jesus loves me but you can barely stand being in the same room.

The weeks streak by. A decade used to be a year.

How could something so wonderful even come to exist?

Like it or not, every thought or action is essentially a prayer.

Is your work keeping you young, or making you old?

I’m of ten minds on the subject.

Every afternoon when the 3 o’clock lasix notification pops up, you go down and walk around her empty rooms, crying.

Death is a growth industry.

Through all our grief and sadness, we hadn’t yet learned to be without hope. Clearly that was necessary.

All night I thought I heard her calling out. Of course, that was impossible. Her voice by now was down to palest air. But I still hear it everywhere.

I can’t imagine feeling any sadder, or any more grateful. Or scared.

I had always respected them, expecting nothing in return, which there wasn’t.

Some things should not be photographed or described, lest they be reduced to photographs or descriptions.

Diagnosis: zero personality disorder.

The level of stupidity was loosely commensurate to the level of ambition.

All that time, all that work, adding up to so little.

Graphic design: a study of margins.

He wanted so badly, just once, to know the right thing to do.

Sooner or later, one way or another, if you care about your work, your employers will make you wish you didn’t.

You discover too late the meaning of too late.

Outside, with the wind and trees and sounds, things were good. Inside, with people, and conclusions, and expectations, not so much.

The way forward: Simply Be Exhausted.

While most of the time you cling to life with fierce gratitude, more often than you’d like to admit you just want to give up and drink yourself to death.

Your prayers were answered, but not in a form you recognized.

Sick with worry, half-mad with hope. Talking to an empty room. Help is on its way.

You’ve finally perfected your craft. The only interesting parts were the mistakes.

He was a man of peace. The killing was done elsewhere.

This person is part of the person that was that person. You don’t get to choose the part that’s convenient.

He’d switched to decaffeinated coffee and non-alcoholic beer, but in such prodigious quantities that it was the same as before.

The part that makes assumptions is the dumbest part of your brain.

We thought of them as our oldest friends, and I only gradually came to understand that they had always regarded me, in some fashion I was unable to decipher, as an object of ridicule.

The truth, by the time it reaches your lips, is no longer true.

The more complex the organism the more objectionable its putrefaction.

In the end it just exhausts you to death.

Why bother? Self defense is by its very nature unconvincing.

Yeah, I get it, but I don’t really get it. If I did, I’d probably drop dead on the spot.