Certainty, in inverse proportion to intelligence.

The seventies were shit; the eighties sucked ass; he barely remembered the nineties; and everything after 2000 was lost in a haze of self-loathing.
Things were looking up.

He didn’t do any of the actual work—there were assistants for that. His role was to think. On occasion he might reveal to his assistants what he was thinking, and his ideas might or might not be incorporated. He left that up to them. He had only a vague awareness of the processes and techniques involved in creating the work. Assistants were underpaid, and left frequently, thus ensuring the steady pace of artistic evolution that had made him famous.

Layers to cover your ruined body, dark glasses for your ruined eyes.

Suffering has made you ugly, which is beautiful.

They had gone so long without, a compliment would have destroyed them.

The people around him were often depressed. He was a “carrier.”

At some point that year they renounced activities that assumed the existence of a viable future.