The U.S. that I had imagined was nowhere near as crazy and as incredibly damaging and brutal and indifferent as the U.S. that we're currently living in. I thought I was being transgressive, apocalyptic, an out-there person. And then reality lapped me, it just lapped me.

It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq.)

If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original.

The thoughts he put in her head. Someone should’ve arrested him for it.

Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.

Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven—where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with—he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder, feeling like, well, he'd jumped off the New Brunswick train bridge.

Nothing more exhilarating ... than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.