The best thing is the combined effect of nicotine with alcohol, greater than the sum of the two parts.

This intimacy is not necessary; no one is compelling me to open my inmost self and lay it naked, undefended, against that of another – merely for the joy of the communion.

Gradually the feeling wears off, and I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alive.

I'd never chosen to be alone, but that was the way things had turned out, and I'd grown used to it.

If not just the brain but the quirks that made the individual were composed of recycled matter only, it was hard to be sure where the edges of one such being ended and another person began.

Knowing one was comprised of recycled matter only and that selfhood was a delusion did not take away the aching of the heart.

We all operate on different levels of awareness. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing.