Find value in what we've been taught is worthless.

You're not getting this back you know. Consider it an asshole tax.

With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page.

Nothing happened, and nothing kept happening.

No matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.

When you don't share your problems, you resent hearing the problems of other people.

The same way a compact disk isn't responsible for what's recorded on it, that's how we are. You're about as free to act as a programmed computer. You're about as one-of-a-kind as a dollar bill.