“The most I can ever do is write things down. To remember them. The details. To honor them in some way.”

“There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper.”

“It's not true that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. At least, not all of it. Some of your life might flash. Other portions of your life it might take you years and years to recall. That, I think, is the function of Hell: It's a place of remembering. Beyond that, the purpose of Hell is not so much to forget the details of our lives as it is to forgive them.”

“Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.”

“I want to tell them, stay in the cage. There are bet­ter things than free­dom. There are worse things than liv­ing a long bored life in some stranger’s house and then dy­ing and go­ing to ca­nary heav­en.”

“When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd never stare long enough to get if they'd even just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.”

“So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn’t funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it. That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can’t control life, at least you can control your version.”