Messages from beyond the pages.

If you can wake up in a different place.

If you can wake up in a different time.

Why can't you wake up as a different person?

We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.

The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly. The farther your run, the more God wants you back.

Nothing is static.

Everything is falling apart.

What you have to know is that Marla is still alive. Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.

There are a lot of things we don't want to know about the people we love.

Cancer will be like that, I tell Marla. There will be mistakes, and maybe the point is not to forget the rest of yourself if one little part might go bad.

At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

Maybe self-destruction is the answer.

The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and nothing can touch you.

Three weeks and I hadn't slept. Three weeks without sleep, and everything becomes an out-of-body experience. My doctor said, "Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what's actually wrong. Listen to your body.

No one ever sees the Angel; but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad and disheartened. Then their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Persons who are visited by the angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. And they can not touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame. Then people who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have genius.

None will ever be true Parisian who was not learned to wear a mask of gaiety of his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom, or indifference over his inward joy. You know that one of your friends is in trouble; do not try to console him: he will tell you that he is already comforted; but, should he have met with good fortune, be careful how you congratulate him: he thinks it so natural that he is surprised that you should speak of it.

He played. He played of love and pain and loss and played and played of all the things I most in this world wanted to believe. I began to cry.

I thought I should move. Then something fixed me. It was music, but it wasn't coming from my disks strewn on the floor, and it wasn't a music I knew, but I knew the instrument.