Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.

...you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.

I'm not dead. But when I am, it's likeI don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading.

Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is.

With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head.

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.

Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait.