Quotes from Tao Lin

I like part-time jobs in restaurants.

I think it would be funny for people to read in obituaries of me that my major contribution to the arts was the popularization of the phrases 'neutral facial expression' and 'screaming in agony.'

I just don't feel good if I'm repeating myself.

loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shape of a helicopter the same size as the helicopter and that's it's only skill and it isn't good enough but it's still amazing.

I don't have a definition for depression. I'm productive, and that's not a sign of depression, right? And I don't have weeks where I don't leave my bed. It seems like depressed people have those.

note the similarities with buddhism a buddhist who has achieved nirvana is not sad primarily because it does not know the concept of sad [...]

I feel 'proud' whenever I feel that I've worked on something for a certain amount of time with a certain amount of attention. I'm not sure if I think in terms of 'pride' though.

The idea of 'advice,' in terms of telling people advice or asking people for advice, has become not comprehensible to me, to a certain degree, due to feeling, like, for something to be accurately defined as 'good' or 'bad,' I would want to know the context, goal, perspective for it.

Life, people learned, was not easy. Life was not cake. Life was not a carrot cake.

Life has never died, which is something that I think people ignore.

I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.

If I were really rich, I would be flying places, I think.

I haven't written about an immigrant experience because I haven't experienced that before and am focused on existential themes.

My first book was poetry, but I didn't write it first. I wrote it third. So my first two books were prose.

I don't know how to incorporate regret. But I'll say, like, "It affected me that way," "I learned this," "Next time maybe I'll do it differently".

Moose had no friends that year. A lot of the time a moose would feel tired and lean against other moose. Only there wouldn't be moose there and the moose would fall.

The distracting feeling of disbelief when you're finally doing something you've procrastinated on for notable amounts of time.

I don't think I understand the concept of regret. Because if I regret anything, that would mean, like, I hate myself.

My face always looks bored or depressed. It's not an accurate impression.

I think I've written about family and things in 'Taipei' which could be considered Asian culture.

I like reading books where people with a lot of money use it to do whatever they want. Like stay in expensive hotels and do whatever drugs they want and fly wherever they want.

Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared ?

There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.

sad things are beautiful only from a distance therefore you just want to get away from them from a distance of one hundred and thirty years ....i'm going to distance myself until the world is beautiful