“ We're all martyrs and we're all villains. That's the truth for everything, because it's all subjective. It's all relative.”

“Are you okay?" Bill asks.Oh, these questions. I could say:"Yes," which would mean, "No.""No," which would mean, "No, but I'm probably not going to tell you what's the matter anyway.""Yeah," which would mean, "I've been better.""I guess," which would mean, "If you press me, I will probably give you some information.""I don't know," which would mean, "I am breaking down, take what you want - it's all lying in piles of smoky, burning debris on the floor anyway, and I want you to take some pleasure in it. Rub it on your body, you bastard. Love it. Yes, I have post-traumatic stress disorder. Yes, my relationship with Becca is falling apart. Yes, I am spiraling downward. Yes, yes, yes, okay?Everything is fucked up! Is that what you want to hear? Is it? Is it?""I don't know," I say.”

“When you make an absolute statement, you assume a sense of personal integrity based on a pretense of moral objectivity, which exists only as a faulty heuristic to arrive at an easy conclusion, and deny yourself the responsibility of choice - it's more convenient not to acknowledge your freedom and settle for a less desirable outcome on the grounds that you had no choice, rather than risk acquiring the less desirable outcome by your own will, regardless of the possibility for a better one.”

“You think God created the world?" he asks me. "Bullshit. Any kind of benevolent and righteous being would never create a fucking world like this. It's impossible. God didn't fucking create the world."Before he walks away completely, he turns back to me one final time, pointing his finger at me. Some people on the beach look over. "Henry," he says, "the Devil created the world when God wasn't looking"He kicks down the little kids' sand castle and goes somewhere with the girls.”

“I once met a traveler who told me he would live to see the end of time. He laid out all his vitamins before me and told me he slept seven hours every night, no more or less. All the life you want, he said. It's all within the palm of your hand now. He said he would outlast all the wars and all the diseases, long enough to remember everything, and long enough to forget everything. He'd be the last man still standing when the sun decides to collapse upon itself and history ends. He said he had found the safest place on earth, where he could stay until the gateway to the beyond opened before him. A thousand generations from today. I pictured him there, atop a remote and snowy mountain. The heavens opening and God congratulating him for his perseverance. Asking him to join Him and watch as the sun burns down to a dull orange cinder and everything around it breaks is orbit and goes tumbling tumbling away, everything that once seemed permanent pulled apart so effortlessly, like a ball of yarn. A life into divinity.But I knew it was a lie. I've always known it was a lie. You can not hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.”

“You cannot hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.”

“It's what surprised him most -- not the overpowering love all the books required that he feel for his child -- just that he simply liked being around him. And even with the diagnoisis, or even since, there's something a little joyous, alongside all the disaster, about living with Hendrick. Some feeling he gets about being in better or closer contact with the things we need, the things we want. I want to run the controls on the dump truck. I want to touch the faucet. I want to open the drawer three hundred times in a row. Because who doesn't want that from time to time? To fall deeper in? Who doesn't do it? Some mornings Jack taps his own spoon a few extra times on the rim of the cereal bowl just for the sheer pleasure of it, and then he'll wonder what the space really is, after all, between tic and illness.”