I wake up every day in order to do something that's quixotic, and not necessarily called for in the world, but I do it because there's extraordinary meaning for me behind the effort.

If you can get by with quotes from The Godfather and nothing you say matters, that's pretty bleak, don't you think? Don't we want what we say to matter?

The main questions of everyday life are too enormous to answer in any definitive sense.

Between the time I first started working in advertising in 1998 and now, the word brand has replaced identity. We are no longer individuals so much as we are brands. We're individual brands. Individuals are basically left to define their individuality by staying off the internet, which in and of itself can be a brand, the opting-out brand.

The internet takes a lot of the anxiety of life away. It's a kind of deity. You're never lonely. You're always distracted. If you spend enough time on it, there's not really that nagging sensation of existential despair; it erases it very effectively. And it's monolithic. And thanks to it, we've got the ways to linger there after death - your blog exists afterwards, your e-mail exists afterwards.

A dentist is only half the doctor he claims to be.

We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen.