Because I can't hit bottom, I can't be saved.

According to Plato, we don't learn anything. Our soul has lived so many lives that we know everything. Teachers and education can only remind us of what we already know.

For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born.

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.

How everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you're proud of will end up as trash.

The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.

After you hear even the shortest great story, it should fill you with a little bit of fear.