Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies. The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.

I think in a way, you're doomed, once you can envision something. You're sort of doomed to make it happen. I've found that the moment I can envision leaving a relationship, that's usually the moment that the relationship starts to fall apart.

That's how a good story works. It changes how you feel. It brings you to a greater appreciation, a greater joy, of your own existence.

For the most part my friends can always be more entertaining than the tube ever can be.

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

I want to have your abortion.

A comedy ends with a wedding, and a tragedy ends with a funeral: you always have to juxtapose sex and death.