The joke is, we all have the same punchline.

A good story should change the way you see the world.

If you take my stuff apart, you'll find my choruses of repetitions are picked up almost verbatim from Kurt Vonnegut, and my distanced fracture quality is all from Amy Hempel, who's probably my favourite writer.

Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.

There's no escaping fate, it just keeps going. Day and night, the future just keeps coming at you.

Anything you can aquire is only another thing you'll lose.