Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again

“What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would create such complex and fancy worm food?”

“Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar…”

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place?