What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?

You kill strangers deliberately so you don't accidentally kill the people you love.

Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity, you will become a statistic.

No mat­ter how much I try and hide this, bit by bit, I start to fall apart.

Marla tells me how in the wild you don't see old animals because as soon as they age, animals die. If they get sick or slow down, something stronger kills them. Animals aren't meant to get old. Marla lies down on her bed and undoes the tie on her bathrobe, and says our culture has made death something wrong. Old animals should be an unnatural exception. Freaks.

We're all going overnight express delivery straight to Hell.

We are a nation of physical animals who have forgotten how much we enjoy being that. We are cushioned by this kind of make-believe, unreal world and have no idea what we can survive because we are never challenged or tested.