For all the sirens, game-show buzzers, and drum-rolls of life, it is the nature of men to die quietly.

The problem with learning the truth about things is that you lose the confidence that comes from being dumb.

I sense a learning: that much dumber people than you end up in charge.

Don’t be lookin up at no sky for help. Look down here, at us twisted dreamers.

And here I'm struck by an epiphany so monstrous in its scale, so blinding in its effect that I feel my skin has turned inside out under the sun, that my innards possess magnetic qualities able to call vast fortunes together. And it's this: anything can happen if I want it to.

For all the sirens, game-show buzzers, and drum-rolls of life, it is the nature of men to die quietly.

Get it out of your head that wine’s just a drink. Real wine is like a missing human gene. It vaccinates you against mundanity, against bad life.