How does that old Richard Pryor line go? ‘I know guys who’ve used cocaine every single day for ten years and never got addicted.’

This is why movies have less value than we like to pretend—movies can’t show reality, because honest depictions of reality offend intelligent people.

Does she not understand that this is no way to live? I want her to be depressed. I want her to want to be different. But she just doesn’t get it.

In general, brilliant people study complex things in order to make life simpler for the average and the less-than-average and the infirm.

The creation of expectation is its own independent process. If I expect anything at all, it will change my perception.

Do they feel some kind of social pressure to prove they’re not self-absorbed, even though the basis of this entire process is a critical examination of one’s own self-absorption?

You want to know what I really learned? I learned that people don’t consider time alone as part of their life. Being alone is just a stretch of isolation they want to escape from.

the TV, one of those variety shows—and it occurred to me that people who don’t talk about themselves are limiting their own potential. They think they’re guarding themselves from some sort of abstract danger, but they’re actually allowing other people to decide who they are and what they’re like.

Did I have a responsibility to this person? Jesus would say, “Yes.” Nietzsche would say, “Don’t ask a question when you already know the answer.” But let’s not get political.