Notes, 4 am
1) the past is a hallucination
2) worst possible combination: eternal life, no god

He said that the better you got to know someone, the less you liked them. Animals were the opposite. Of course, you could never really know anyone. Each human being inhabited a vast chasm that could never be filled. The best you could manage was a few shovelfuls of dirt, ten miles away and ten miles down.

Standing at the back window, sipping coffee and watching the traffic light change colors in the rain. Your world is coming back to you. Soon it will all be too much—but for now you’re grateful.

He couldn’t stand people whose voices sounded as if they knew they were likable.

It took him nearly two decades to find a suitably megalomaniacal form for his art.

The entire universe is made of sub-atomic particles.
Actually, just one particle, moving very fast.
The particle is getting old. The particle is wearing out. At first the disappearances are so small you don’t notice them. And then one day the color blue is gone, and you wonder if it ever existed to begin with.
I want my blue back.

The residue of your thoughts and actions. You built this house; live in it.

Book II:
After the booze ran out.

After years of rigorously eliminating everything pretentious, self-serving or inauthentic in his character, he realized there was nothing left.