Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the sombre renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings.

The question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures us of our innocence of the future.

Making things difficult for the reader is less an attack on the reader than it is on the age and its facile knowledge-market.

Technology is lust removed from nature.

When he died he would not end. The world would end.

Explain me to myself, you’ll make me choke on my lunch. Feel sympathy for me, I’ll puke monkey blood on your understated shoes.

He'd once told me that the art of getting ahead in New York was based on learning how to express dissatisfaction in an interesting way. The air was full of rage and complaint. People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it.