My bones are ringing the way sometimes people say their ears are ringing, I'm so tired.

Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it.

It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most "familiarity" is meditated and delusive.

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.

The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.

My whole life I've been a fraud. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much all I've ever done all the time is try to create a certain impression of me in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. It's a little more complicated than that, maybe. But when you come right down to it it's to be liked, loved. Admired, approved of, applauded, whatever. You get the idea.