Being a decent human being will require effort and energy.

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph.

To have had fame, even very minor fame, and to have lost it, got older and maybe put on a little weight is a kind of living death.

He's laughing me into a stupor, she thought. I could heckle, I suppose, I could throw a bread roll at him, but he's eaten them all. She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show? Eat a meal, go to bed, fall in love with me and I promise you years and years of top notch material like this?

Don’t keep fighting battles that are already lost.

Just kidding' was exactly what people wrote when they meant every word.