Quotes from Tao Lin

Pessoa talked about there being no escape," the bear said. "He was right.

For one human being to seek enlightenment from another is like a grain of sand on the beach seeking enlightenment from another.

Nice" said Paul staring transfixed at Fran's delicate and extreme gaze, like that of a skeleton with eyeballs, or a person with their face peeled off.

periods are the only thing i can think of where its a problem if you don't bleed

just became so overwhelmed with potential food options that i actually cried

Everyone stared...at their own hands, or else abstractedly at the wall, as there had become in the room a feeling of immobilization, something of both nostalgia and doom--a sort of gigantic helplessness...an unpleasant urge to stay still for a very long time, forever, perhaps, not saying or thinking anything, but just accepting one another, entering and absorbing and maybe, finally, somehow--with anonymity, osmosis, conjecture, and luck--then, experiencing one another.

and sleepily thought of how technology was no longer the source of wonderment and possibility it had been...

Susie-Q," said Daniel with a smirk-like grin indicating both earnest disapproval and a kind of fondness toward Seroquel and its intense, often uncomfortable tranquilizing effects—as if, believing Susie-Q wasn't malicious, he could forgive her every time she induced twelve hours of sleep followed by twelve to twenty-four hours of feeling lost and irritable, therefore she functioned, if inadvertently, as a teacher of forgiveness and acceptance and empathy, for which he was grateful.

Andrew saw her next a few months later, from across a street, and she averted her eyes. Did she avert her eyes? Maybe she was being polite when she said ten times and enthusiastically that she was having a lot of fun. Maybe she was being sarcastic. Maybe politeness is the same as sarcasm. Someone should write that book. Against Politeness.

most days, a keen, gray energy (this deadened sort of voltage--something of the faux-sophistication, low-grade restlessness, and, in that she often had the urge to stop walking and curl against a building and sleep there and freeze to death, a passive-aggressive sort of suicidal despair) would move through her (though some afternoons around her, uncertainly, like she might be in the way, and then she'd just feel indistinct and hungry).

Laura was ten feet away, in a throne-like chair, facing Paul, but not looking at him, or anyone, it seemed. Paul openly stared at her for around ten seconds, to no response, then moved chips and guacamole onto his lap (partly because he felt anxious about Laura seeming to refuse to look at him) and focused on steadily eating while repeatedly thinking "eating chips and guacamole.

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 than 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

Feel certain that I will die of sudden and incurable obesity within the next week

It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat.

I made her admit she liked me. She likes me. But we're too alike. When you're with someone and neither of you can stop saying good things. Then you both get very aware that life will end soon. I think that's why we don't talk that much.

Craving burrito so much that I can't move or breathe

Patched-together or hard-won coverings of positivity flew away with ridiculous suddenness, like hats, or else gradually and unceremoniously, over days, like paint.

each moment of being herself, she knew, was a strengthening, an adapting, of who she was; and she didn't want to be who she was—that she would squeak a little.

At some point, Paul vaguely realized, technology had begun for him to mostly only indicate the inevitability and vicinity of nothingness. Instead

thousand island dressing' seems troubling

feels like i'm 'seething' with the inability to sleep…

He allowed himself to consider earlier opportunities, mostly for something to do, and discerned after a brief sensation of helplessness--like if he'd divided 900 by itself and wanted the calculator to answer 494/494 or 63/63--that, in terms of leaving this social situation, he shouldn't have been born.

having 'weakly disturbing' images of waffles with pasta on top

in florida a giant hamster lays in bed worrying about its future the hamster has bad eyesight and many other problems later that night the hamster drives its car around listening to sad music; the master lightly drums its paws on the steering wheel the hamster is alone but not for long: at home three waffle friends wait cooling inside a countertop oven in the kitchen