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.

A shadow of a reflection of an image of an illusion.

Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.

We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.

In light this bright, after so long in the dark, everything we can see is only black and white. Only glaring shape-outlines we have to blink against.

And it [Fight Club novel] was written so general that my father thought I was writing about his father, and my boss thought I was writing about his boss. People really put themselves, you know, in the shoes of the narrator.

Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.