“It was the kind of place you went when your earthly troubles became too much for you and you were looking for a creative way to commit suicide.”

“You have endless ways you can commit suicide without dying dying.”

“The trouble with friends was that you couldn’t get rid of them. There was no way to take back a friendship in the wake of betrayal or disappointment. The friendship, and everything that went with it, stayed. It just became unreliable, like an abandoned house; you still knew where all the rooms were, and which stairs creaked underfoot, but you had to check every floorboard for rot before trusting your weight to it.”

“When you get too excited about the possibilities, you don't stop to consider the consequences. Just when you get too cocky, life has a way of putting you in your place.”

“There's a kind of luck that's not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that's not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.”

“Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.”