I laugh maniacally, then take a deep breath and touch my chest- expecting a heart to be thumping quickly, impatiently, but there's nothing there, not even a beat.

The Smiths are singing and someone says "Turn that gay angst music off.

I totally relate to Tom Cruise. He's not crazy, it's just the litany of the mid-life crisis.

There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone, in fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.

Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine? But isn't that what people do?

I really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels.

Open the hood of a car and it will tell you something about the people who designed it, is just one of many phrases I’m tortured by.