“The single-biggest proof that the Dixie Chicks are Van Halen is their audience; they are singing to the same teenage boys, except those boys are now teenage girls. ”

“As of right now, I am in love with her, and that love is the biggest problem in my life.”

“Contrary to what you may have heard from Henry Rollins or/and Ian MacKaye and/or anyone else who joined a band after working in an ice cream shop, you can't really learn much about a person based on what kind of music they happen to like. As a personality test, it doesn't work even half the time. However, there is at least one thing you can learn: The most wretched people in the word are those who tell you they like every kind of music 'except country.' People who say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time.”

“By now, everyone I know is one of seven strangers, inevitably hoping to represent a predefined demographic and always failing horribly. The Read World is the real world is The Real World is the read world. It’s the same true story, even when it isn’t.”

“Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever--one has to assume that you can't be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I'm certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It's not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they're not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more 'diabolical' in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stalin was in heaven, I would note the irony, but I couldn't complain. I don't make the fucking rules.”

“Why do you keep saying that " he asked in response "Apples and oranges aren't that different really. I mean they're both fruit. Their weight is extremely similar. They both contain acidic elements. They're both roughly spherical. They serve the same social purpose. With the possible exception of a tangerine I can't think of anything more similar to an orange than an apple. If I was having lunch with a man who was eating an apple and-while I was looking away-he replaced that apple with an orange I doubt I'd even notice. So how is this a metaphor for difference I could understand if you said 'That's like comparing apples and uranium ' or 'That's like comparing apples with baby wolverines ' or 'That's like comparing apples with the early work of Raymond Carver ' or 'That's like comparing apples with hermaphroditic ground sloths.' Those would all be valid examples of profound disparity.”

“The last girl I love will be someone I haven’t even met yet, probably.”