I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun - although I suppose I kind of am - as I am the opposite of fun. I suck the fun out of a room. Or perhaps I'm just a different kind of fun; the kind that leaves on bereft of hope; the kind of fun that ends in tears.
David RakoffWhat remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.
David RakoffThere are many things in this world that are an outrage, to be sure, but death at our current life expectancy doesnโt strike me as one of them. Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind.
David RakoffI do not go outdoors. Not more than I have to. As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.
David RakoffIf psychoanalysis was late 19th century secular Judaismโs way of finding spiritual meaning in a post-religious world, and retail is the late 20th centuryโs way of finding spiritual meaning in a post-religious world, what does it mean that Iโm impersonating the father of psychoanalysis in a store window to commemorate a religious holiday?
David Rakoff