Portland in particular is a cheap enough place to live that you can still develop your passion - painting, writing, music. People seem less status-conscious. Even wealthy people buy second-hand clothes and look a little bit homeless.

Someone bent on suicide won't have much sense of humor left.

Rant said that view of time was set up so folks won't live forever. It's the planned obsolescence we've all agreed to...'Nothing says you have to swallow this,' Rant told me. 'You can always just die.

I think America is just so in love with conflict.

The problem in this case was you can't be a middle-aged virgin in America without something being wrong with you. People can't conceive of a virtue in someone else that they can't conceive in themselves. Instead of believing you're stronger, it's so much easier to imagine you're weaker.

People take conventional ways that other people have always decorated their cars, and use them as ways of giving other people permission to approach them.

If you're going to read this, don't bother.