With "Taipei" Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation...

There’s no grand plan. All I know is that I write the books I want to write. All that other stuff is meaningless to me.

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

I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care.

I had dreamed of something so different from what reality was now offering up, but that dream had been a blind man's vision. That dream was a miracle. The morning was fading. And I remembered yet again that I was a tourist here.

But this road doesn't go anywhere,” I told him. “That doesn't matter.” “What does?” I asked, after a little while. “Just that we're on it, dude,” he said.

You learn to move on without the people you love.