We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy's impossible.

An ad that pretends to be art is – at absolute best – like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you.

This is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.

It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

Try to let what is unfair teach you.

The sun like a sneaky keyhole view of hell.