With age you become invisible to increasing portions of the population; in compensation, you begin to see them more clearly.

Your mind, trapped inside your mind.

The book’s celebrated “brutal honesty,” refreshing at first, is ultimately outweighed by a hipster/junky air of smug self-congratulation I’ve encountered in some AA people, reveling in their transgressive pasts while simultaneously gloating over their current virtue.

He got out of bed only when the need for coffee outweighed the pain of existence.

What would you do if you could go back in time?
Probably die of embarrassment.

Don’t love your artists, it turns them into monsters.

General assholishness somehow protected him from sadness.

Another evening of mutual assured destruction.

By the time you get her attention, the bartender already seems annoyed. You’re getting that a lot lately. You expect it, really. You give her a short nod, turn and head out into the rain. You’re coming down with your third cold of the season and there seems to be something wrong with your legs. Your father died 20 years ago today. The earnest, dignified man you remember could be your brother now. Limping home in your wet coat, almost comical in your desolation, you wonder. In 20 years, will anyone raise a toast in your memory?

I know you by your habits; the grooves you have cut in the world; the familiar boredoms I would miss beyond all else.

My aunt had a big old chunky hand-carved Dubrovnik set she picked up in Yugoslavia in the early 80s. Each piece was over 5 feet tall and moved around on a football field-sized board with an elaborately geared system of pulleys and levers. Tournaments were winner-take-all affairs, with the losers consigned to tower jail cells. In the event of a draw both players were executed.