“Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.”

“In the way our world is, everybody shoulder to shoulder, people knowing everything about you at first glance, a good veil is your tinted limousine window. The unlisted number for your face. Behind a good veil, you could be anyone.”

“They want me to account for my next ten years. Their way, everything in your life turns into an item on a list. Something to accomplish. You get to see how your life looks flattened out.The shortest distance between two points is a timeline, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life.Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.”

“With every lecture, you’re forced to look again at every choice you’ve made over the lesson-by-lesson chain of your entire life. And after all these years, you see how little you have to work with, how limited your life and education have been. How scant was your courage and curiosity. Not to mention your expectations.”

“I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.”

“This is the greatest momemt of your life and your out missing it”

“There's worse that people can steal from you than money.”