“Everest silences you...when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue.”

“What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue.”

“...a time when the plans and ideals that you've been dreaming of for years come up against reality. you graduate from college and have to find your way in the real world. you learn that there is no perfect job. there is no perfect relationship.”

“I was thinking: Is this what love is, feeling like you've been spun around underwater? Forgetting how cold you are, until she looks up and you look down and you're embarrassed and the world comes rushing back in? Or is love not being able to get that image out of your head, the image of the moment right before she looked up?”

“What is the meaning in anything? What is the use? Why don't you just burn the world up? Why don't you just decide that's all the use that world was, I'll make another one. I'll learn from my mistakes. I'll make a better one. Because in this one you've messed up. You've messed up badly. Has anyone told you that? Hasn't anyone's prayers said that? You've made an almighty mess. Because you've taken your eyes off us. You've looked away and you've let people starve, you've let people get AIDS, millions of them. You've let others bomb innocent ordinary people who are just doing their everyday things. You've killed them. You've killed them for no reason. They're just here one day and then they don't come home. Why do you let that happen? Answer me. Why?Is it just Chance? Is there nothing but that, no meaning, no purpose, nothing? You made a world for nothing. Is that it? Just a meaningless star in the galaxy with millions of creatures with no purpose at all. Millions of creatures that have this delusion that you are there? You're the God delusion, is that it? Why do we even have it then? Why do we even dream there is any you? Why are we even persisting in you after all these centuries, when you can't do anything for us? So you are either a joke, you have no power at all, or you are a killer. Those are the choices as I see it. As I see it you are doing nothing for us. You have done nothing for me. You've not even been listening, have you?”

“After all, you can't truly be happy if you've never known pain. You can't truly feel joy if you've never felt heartbreak. You can't know what it's like to be filled unless you've been empty.”