“I feel like a parent whose children prefer to stay inside and watch TV. The father pleads, "It's a beautiful day. Why don't you go play outside?" In this case, I feel like pleading, "It's a completely spooky night. Forget the loud music--come outside and have a blood sacrifice or something! There's a full moon!" (Jonathan Ames, Middle-American Gothic)”

“Recently, I've discovered Radiohead and find them to be quite good. So clearly, I'm some kind of musical retard. (Jonathan Ames, Middle-American Gothic)”

“Luce,' she says, 'I don't want my diary entry tomorrow to be: Stayed out all night. Went to prison. I have this urge to go home and watch TV with my parents and be completely boring.”

“I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only me.' 'Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Probably. But it really is worse for me.”

“If I'm going to be working out here in a place that at least feels like the middle of nowhere, I'm going to need access to the outside world. It's important to have access. Solitude is one thing, but you could turn into the Unabomber if you don't have some connection to people.”

“Families are like countries. They have their own language and jokes and secrets and assumptions about the right and wrong ways of doing things, and some of that always shows in the children, the way something of Germany or Australia always shows in a German or an Australian, no matter where they go. Outsiders like it or they don't, they feel at home there or they don't. It's like the taste of cilantro.”