I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.

People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.

He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

And so being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.

Socializing is as exhausting as giving blood. People assume we loners are misanthropes, just ­sitting thinking, ‘Oh, people are such a bunch of assholes,’ but it’s really not like that. We just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others. It means having to perform. I get so tired of communicating.

If you dissect a bird
To diagram the tongue
You’ll cut the chord
Articulating song.

If you flay a beast
To marvel at the mane
You’ll wreck the rest
From which the fur began.

If you pluck out the heart
To find what makes it move,
You’ll halt the clock
That syncopates our love.

I love you. Those words were not worn out two thousand six hundred years ago. Are they worn out now? Perhaps, but not by repetition, but by strain. There are other ways of saying what I mean … Other words fit for the weight. Other words that pin me to an honesty I might not like. So much can be hidden in ‘I love you.’ I can hide in that sentimental cloud.

When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

So I’m pouring some whiskey, I’m gonna get drunk
Yeah, I’m pouring myself some whiskey, I’m going to get really fucking drunk
I’m pouring some whiskey right now, I’m going to get so, so drunk
That I pass out, forget your face, by the time I wake up.