I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.

I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.

The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it.

We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes.

What kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat, if we had the moral imagination and the pragmatic will to change our most fundamental act of consumption?

I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?

So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!