“After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.”

“The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, "I want to love, I want to live...”

“At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.”

“Such movies are always a danger...falling in love is something most adults have actually experienced...The theme is universal and encourages...unhealthy comparisons...why can't our lives be like that? It's a box left unopened, and its avoidance explains the continued popularity of vampire epics and martial-arts extravaganzas.”

“College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking..”

“He didn't understand that it's all connected, that one subject leads to another and forms a kind of chain that rises its head and nods like cobra when you're sucking on a bong after three days of no sleep. On acid, it's even wilder and appears to eat things. But not having gone to college, my dad had no concept of a well-rounded liberal arts education.”

“For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I’d squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I’m now told that this is not called “going to sleep” but rather “passing out,” a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment.”