“ You're probably wondering why there's never any good news. I mean, I've been doing this job a few months now. I've been soaking up the paper every week, same as you, and watching the same newsfeeds as you. I got the same list burned into the front of my head as you. Death. Horror. Bad sex. Living nightmares. Each day a little further down the spiral. There's never any good news because they know you. I mean, here's the top of today's column that I discarded: I had a really good time last night down the bar with my assistant and some cheerfully doomed sex fiends of our acquaintance. No one ever sold newspapers by telling you the truth; life just ain't that bad.”

“You think that drinking with a serial killer takes you into the midnight currents of the culture? I say bullshit. There's been twelve TV documentaries, three movies and eight books about me. I'm more popular than any of these designed-by-pedophile pop moppets littering the music television and the gossip columns. I've killed more people than Paris Hilton has desemenated, I was famous before she was here and I'll be famous after she's gone. I am the mainstream. I am, in fact, the only true rock star of the modern age. Every newspaper in America never fails to report on my comeback tours, and I get excellent reviews.”

“My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me. . . .Grandpa isn't coming back? No, she said. Not ever again. . . . And I remember saying, hold everything right fucking there. You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and clothing me and all . . . and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to and sometimes I just want to scream -- and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head -- I go through all this, and then there's death? What is the motherfucking deal here? I wasn't having this. This was not fair.”

“...You people don't know what the truth is! It's there, just under their bullshit, but you never look! That's what I hate most about this fucking city-- LIES ARE NEWS AND TRUTH IS OBSOLETE!”

“I remember first learning about death quite vividly.I'm not sure how old I was, but I remember the conversation like it was yesterday. My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me.'Sometimes, when someone gets ill, and they're very very old, they don't get better again. They just get iller and iller and then... then their body stops working.''I don't understand.''What's in them just goes away, and doesn't come back.''Grandpa isn't coming back?''No,' she said. 'Not ever again.''Grandpa said he was going away and not ever coming back after he held Grandma's head in that cotton-dump outside of town and kicked Skeeter seventy-three times.''Grandpa was very drunk. That's not the same as being dead. Grandpa's dead, son. He's not there anymore.'And I remember saying, 'Hold everything right fucking THERE.'You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and feeding me and clothing me and all-- and, YEAH, whipping me from time to time, and making me live in a house that's freezing fucking cold all the goddamn time-- and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to do and sometimes I just want to scream-- and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head-- I go through all this-- and then there's death?'What is the motherfucking deal here?”

“Writing comics? Still the best job in the world. I sit around all day making shit up and see it illustrated, in 99% of cases, exactly as I imagined it -- if not better. I've been doing this a long time now, and I'm going to do it until I die. Which probably won't be long, given the constant insane deadline pressure.”

“Do you realize what you accomplished today? You're supposed to be happy right now.” “I am. That's the most fucked-up part,” he said. “I've never been happier in my life. But when dreams come true in reality they never feel the same as when you imagine them, and you know what that means? It means that no matter how good things are, maybe they'll never be good enough, and there's something seriously wrong with that.”