Hope or expectation, that’s where the trouble begins.

Intelligence, inversely proportionate to reliance on jargon.

The point at which you realize your pet might outlive you.

Whenever I see an advertisement cut to a soundtrack of “What a Wonderful World,” I always feel like I’m being sold a great big steaming pile of shit.

The universe has been generous enough to offer you the opportunity to fail—utterly—yet again, and you have predictably accepted without a moment of hesitation or gratitude, or even being aware of it.

August in the city when nobody gives a fuck anymore.

The present you’ve ignored becomes the past you cling to.

He’d been waiting for a long time to hit bottom—apparently you get a small bounce at the end.

You fail to avoid an old coworker on street, and just shake your head in greeting. It’s been that kind of year.

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

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.

He remembered the results of a study finding that over 50% of people you consider friends don’t reciprocate. Although in his case this was more or less irrelevant, he still found it depressing.

In the dream he caught the eye of someone who seemed familiar, a trusted friend of long ago or a forgotten family member, only to realize with a shock that it was a younger, kinder version of himself—a version he’d forgotten had ever existed. Describing it to them, he suddenly burst into tears. He said that three days after the dream his depression had lifted. The dream seemed rather obvious, he said, but the mind likes obvious. Obvious works.