“And confessions of love have always seemed out of place when youre gasping for air, when youre begging for pain,when youre missing something, unable to change the channel.”

“I havent felt the full weightof the world on my shoulders,and I havent experienceda fraction of the painand embarrassment Ive put out into this great bigwhite world.”

“I think of drug dealers like I think of my father never really there when you want them to be.”

“In the movies, God is an actor just like everyone else.”

“My desire to self-destruct is a one-night standon Groundhog Day.Fucking repetitive. Repetitively fucking.”

“You grow bored of these shrines, and you abandon thembecause you know for a fact that you will worshipanything you kneel before.Like God.Like cock.Like porcelain.”

“I bought salvation from a man on the street. He said, "Go down to the beach and let the waves wash your feet.”

“We all have those things that help us carry on through life. It is important that these things upon which we depend for daily strength are healthy for our character rather than harmful. We must ask...”

“God made you for His pleasure. And He made you intrinsically needy and dependent on His unspeakable joy. If you are struggling with sin our addiction, dont try to kill your appetite for pleasure. I...”

“[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving w...”

“We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, deba...”

“We left behind the other kids; their path-working, drinking, and being grown up- and rejected all that made them grumpy, uncreative and lifeless. We dumpstered, squatted, and shoplifted our lives b...”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”