Quotes from Tao Lin

I may not be confident or ambitious but at least I'm not confident and ambitious

He wished his mom had stayed in Taiwan. Raised him here, native. He wished his mom had died early, leaving him to do things for himself. Neil wished for 10 percent increases in kindness, tolerance, social skills, confidence and attractiveness and then felt cheated in life by 10 percent.

Pessimism? Or Robotics? i am able to sit through an extremely funny movie without making a noise or changing my facial expression i am incapable of laughing without trying to laugh i am never interested in anyone unless they first show interest in me i try not to think of myself as a person but a metal object, built suddenly by machines in complete darkness something impossible to hurt with a shovel

Fucked people, great weather.

I don't like happy people," Andrew said. "They're already happy; they don't need to be liked.

Everyone is folding boxes. Andrew is folding boxes. If the entire job were to fold boxes people would scream. They would fold, and sometimes scream, existentially, then be dragged into a field and beaten into a paste. Sometimes there would be a killing rampage.

This was a place impossible for romance, a place where tea was brewed, earnestly, from paint chips, glass shards, and small change. In this world, Sean knew, one could put faith in a toe bone, a blood bone, a cartilage of eye--all the unloved contributors of one's own body world.

She felt strange. For a moment it seemed to her that the day was already over--she was in bed, asleep, and then it was the next day and now here she was again. 'Oh,' she said.

Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive that he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored.

Haley Joel Osment said "Party girl" which was a term they had for people who did not speak in a quiet monotone and were not severely detached.

I know,' said Erin, and described how she'd lately felt depressed in a new and scary way, which Paul also had felt lately and described as a sadness-based fear, immune to tone and interpretation, as if not meant for humans - more visceral than sadness, but unlike fear because it decreased heart rate and impaired the senses, causing everything to seem 'darker.

Rejection is good. Putting others ahead of self, giving things away. Success, money, power, fame, happiness, friends; any kind of pleasure—giving it all away, in the pyramid scheme of life, with the knowledge that everything will be returned, and being satisfied with that knowledge; not with the actual return of things, but the idea of the return of things. There is no return of things. There is death. Martial arts, deer, death. Singapore, octopus, death.

Self help book titled 'How To Hate Other People More Than You Hate Yourself

sad things are beautiful only from a distance

Nature isn't mute," he thought in distracted review. Something mute wouldn't unfurl a universe in which to evolve singularityward. Something mute wouldn't speak people from atoms.

Mercury in retrograde? More like I'm permanently insane no matter what the fuck Mercury does

Thousands of years from now they will use my fossil remains as an example of a mistake in the evolutionary process

Sara would call one of those cops on horses a motherfucker. The cop would avert his eyes. Sara would ask directions for the wild wild west.

The gate has a secret passcode. Sara has a secret passcode. She should. Andrew would stand there for years trying combinations. He wouldn't keep track or develop a strategy but just continue trying different combinations and then Kafka would rise from the grave and write a novel about him.

He asked if there were more things she had lied about. She said she had to think. She said she was still thinking. After about two minutes she said she was still thinking.

Good morning, this is Dan Rather, with the news. Today, [person] died in an insanely nonhumorous manner

It sometime occurred to him that for love to work, it had to be fair, that he should tell only half the joke, and she the other half. Otherwise, it would not be love, but something completely else--pity or entertainment, or stand-up comedy.

A cool thing is that stuff can always get worse and it usually does

Sorry, I'd love to hang out with you but this alcohol isn't going to drink itself into incoherence and liver failure