quote me.

The park is in a swirl. We are all rushing about, and I think how nobody smashes into anyone else although all is movement. We make eddies and channels in the air with our bodies between the rides and the movement of the rides and the movement of our breath, and all the time the ocean slaps into shore back and forth, back and forth, its eternal movement seeming suddenly prosaic in comparison to this froth we create on the shore. And I realize we are all more powerful than the sea, able to go as we wish, unlike the steady coming and going of the tide, which is powerless to change its prescribed motion.

We all have so many functions, so many ways of existing. In my own vision of myself, I am a scholar who lives quietly, and pens his little tales, and dreams about a past that may or may not ever have existed. And that is true, as far as it goes.

There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't.

Pigeons strike me as good listeners--they discern the voices of mates over the cacophony of the natural world. They move the right way too. A pigeon's head-tilts suggest the kinds of things that I imagine therapists say: "Really?" or "How did that feel?" or "Tell me more."

Shadow accepted it, completely and without reservation, and he walked through the door into nothing with fierce joy.

It is funny to think they live next to me, busy busy, and I am so taken up with my own life most of the time, I am not conscious of theirs going on parrallel to mine. And they are not concious of me either or all the important things I think I must do every day.

"The Holy Roman Empire pulsed like a rich man with a fever, fearful yet exalted at the prospect of the light."

But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.

—pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don’t freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it.

And my father, Tommy Devlin, he would never walk away. Not from a thousand goddamned Nazis. And definitely not from a man who said please in that voice.

Death travels inside that space where Time has no meaning. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness had always got there first, and is waiting for it.

Everything about him is important.

I am Word uttering introduction to the play of happiness and peace.

Just because something seems impossible doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

We walk a bit and I have many urges—to apologize, to explain myself, to say we can start over… or at least jump backwards, prior to our Fillmore’s dinner. But time travel isn’t possible, and an explanation doesn’t seem necessary and an apology seems dramatic.

I am covered in skin that has become self-aware.

That’s my future self, that’s my future self. Listen to you. You sound like an idiot. Who do you think you are? Imagine there’s a version of you that sees all of it. A version that knows when versions of your are messing with the other ones, trying to get things off track, trying to erase things. A record of all the keystrokes, the storage of all the versions, partial and deleted and written over. All the changes. All truths about all parts of our self. We break ourselves up into parts. To lie to ourselves, to hide things from ourselves. You are not you. You are not what you think you are. You are bigger than you think. More complicated than you think. You are the only version of you that is you. There are less of you than you think, and more. There are a million versions of you, half a trillion. One for every particle, every quantum coin flip. Imagine this uncountable number of yous. You don’t always have your own best interests at heart. That’s true. You are your own best friend and you own worst enemy. You can’t trust a guy who gives you a book and says, This is your life. He might have been your future, he might not. Only you know how to get there. Only you know what you need to do. Imagine there’s a perfect version of you. Out of all the oceans of oceans of you, there is exactly one who is perfectly you. And that’s me. And I’m telling you; you are the only you.