Our worlds are so momentary. We are along all our lives and then go off that way as well.

What I've learned is that there is nothing in this life that does not fail to disappoint us, even our own deaths.

After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.

The most important things in your life are almost always impossible to predict.

Do not be confused by what the natural world knows: We are all, in our own way, completely and totally alone. If love is real, it is complete and total failing of the intellect. It is utter self-destruction. It is pandemonium.

[Sex] is really awkward. You know you have expectations and then it's this great moment of connection and it's a surprise. But that's what so exciting about it is that sense of surprise.

Sacrifice doesn't really exist on a national level anymore and that's a pretty new thing - most people aren't engaged nationally in some form of service and that changes the way you think about people in your country; you kind of think of them at a distance. And so there's that shift away from some sort of sacrifice - thinking of yourself as the most important thing in the world versus thinking of yourself as some sort of a whole.