The American Dream, coupled with government subsidies of utilities and cheap consumer goods courtesy of slave labour somewhere else, has kept the poor huddled masses from rising up.

It didn’t and doesn’t turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It’s only a matter of how long you can live with it.

In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead

Everything's plastic, we're all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter.

I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on.

After they had explored all the suns in the universe, and all the planets of all the suns, they realized there was no other life in the universe, and that they were alone. And they were very happy, because then they knew it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find.

I wanted so much to forget the past, but it wouldn't go away, it hung around like an open wound that refused to scar over, an open window that no amount of muscle could shut.