“Partying means drinking. It also means playing records by Lou Reed and Chicago, which I thought was a city but is also a band it turns out.”

“One aspect of perfection, after all, it stands to reason, will be that our need for imperfection will cease. Or, perhaps more precisely: that imperfection itself will cease to have meaning.”

“Everything ends, and Everything matters. Everything matters not in spite of the end of you and all that you love, but because of it. Everything is all you’ve got…and after Everything is nothing. So you were wise to welcome Everything, the good and the bad alike, and cling to it all. Gather it in. Seek the meaning in sorrow and don’t ever turn away, not once, from here until the end. Because it is all the same, it is all unfathomable, and it is all infinitely preferable to the one dreadful alternative.”

“All of which raises the question – your task, burden, privilege, call it what you like – a question which men and women, great and not-so of every color, creed and sexual persuasion have asked since they first had the language to do so, and probably before: Does Anything I Do Matter?”

“I am not your God. Or if I am, I'm no God you can seek out for deliverance or explanation. I'm the kind of God who would eat you without compunction if I were hungry.”

“Compassion is a coat of fur I find particularly ill-fitting.”

“He forgot about me almost as soon as I disappeared from sight.”