Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That’s the earth. Why it goes around. We’re the rocks. And what happens to us—the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse—why, that’s just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.

You ever wonder if Adam and Eve were just the puppies God dumped because they wouldn't house-train?

Rant would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.

Because everything up to now is a story and everything after now is a story.

When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?

The voice says, maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.

A good story isn't the one that shuts everyone down and sort of leaves them in silent awe. A good story is one that, even before you finish the anecdote, you can see their eyes shining because it has so resonated with something from their own lives that everyone in the group has a version of the same story and they cannot wait to tell it, and that they're going to compete to make their version even more extreme than your version. So your version is just a seed.