Skill is a function of chance. It’s an intuitive best-use of chance situations.

But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That's closer to it. The artistic life without the talent.

You know how people are about not taking care of an animal; they consider it immoral and antiempathic. I mean, technically it's not a crime like it was right after WWT but the feeling's still there.

The pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life… My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.

The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.

Fish cannot carry guns.

Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans.