...the sun would leave my sky if I couldn't assume you'd simply come and tell me you were sad.

It's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.

life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.

I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art.

Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.

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?

Ideally, each piece of art's its own unique object, and its evaluation's always present-tense.