Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?

Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

If you've never wept and want to, have a child.

American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.

Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.

‎Who would die for this chance to be fed this death of pleasure with spoons, in their warm homes, alone, unmoving?

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.