Quotes from Paul Neilan

It's like someone who prays every night saying God's a good listener. Just because you're talking to us doesn't mean we're listening. With me and God, you never really know.

If stealing a few saltshakers was wrong I didn't want to be right.

Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore.

The world is your oyster... ...too bad you're allergic to shellfish.

It was nice of her to want to believe the best about me. People tend to do that with the strangers they're fucking. If she wanted to think that apathy and independence were the same thing, good for her. Maybe she was right.

at first I thought you were just using me she said I definitely am. I just wasn't sure for what. Asshole! she said, and punched me in the side. And she laughed as my kidney began to hemorrhage. That's the beauty of honesty. Everyones so unused to hearing it they just assume you're kidding, and you get to feel very good and forthcoming without suffering any consequences except for traces of blood in your urine for the next day or two.

And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it.

Sitting on my stool I thought of a bumper sticker: If Mean People Suck, Why Isn't My Dick In Your Mouth?

If stealing a few saltshakers was wrong I didn't want to be right.

In the long term everyone traffics in foregone conclusions, and in the short term they just get drunk. This is the way it has always been. Some half-assed ambiguity masquerading as mystery is all anybody's really looking for.

It's like someone who prays every night saying God's a good listener. Just because you're talking to us doesn't mean we're listening. With me and God, you never really know.

It takes more than one kick in the pants to reverse a lifetime of unplanned apathy.

Whenever I'm leaving I get sentimental for that nostalgia I know I won't have the next day.

But really it's condescending and patronizing not to make fun of someone because they're old or stupid or crippled or morbidly obese. Banged up people don't want your pity. They just want to be treated like everyone else. Mockery, when done without prejudice or discretion, can be a form of respect. It's the closest we'll ever come to true equality.

I was stealing salt shakers again. Ten, sometimes twelve a night, shoving them up my sleeves, smuggling them out of bars and diners and anywhere else I could find them. In the morning, wherever I woke up, I was always covered in salt. I was cured meat. I had become beef jerky. Even as a small child, I knew it would one day come to this.

If Tolstoy were alive today and working at Panopticon Insurance, he'd say that all insurance companies are the same, then throw himself through an eighteenth story window and plunge to his death in a hail of glass and shattered dignity (70).

Buy this book or I'll take it personally, and I will have my revenge. I'll steal your girlfriend or make out with your dad. It doesn't matter to me. Whichever will hurt worse. My vengeance knows no sexuality. You don't want this. Your dad does though. Yeah, like you didn't know your parents' marriage was a sham. Come on. Open your fucking eyes.

Mockery when done without prejudice or discretion, can be a form of respect. It's the closest we'll ever come to true equality.

I was just being honest and descriptive." "No, you were being an asshole." "It's not my fault they have to always be the same thing.

He had strawberry blond hair. That's enough right there. That's all you need to know. If you're a man with strawberry blond hair and you're not in the circus or a Viking, odds are you have not found your place in life and never will.

Lying to other people is fine and usually funny, but lying to yourself is tacky.

Buy it for anyone you know who cries in the shower, who drinks in the morning, whose life only has meaning when they're asleep and dreaming that they're somebody else. They will find comfort here. And if they don't, it's not your fault. They've always been this way. Some people are just all banged up. Good for you for trying to help. You're a great person. Give yourself a hand.

Two wrongs don't make a right but sometimes they make me laugh. I am a vengeful god.

She was the sadistic older brother who holds you down and slaps your forehead over and over again, lets a string of spit fall until it almost hits your face and then slurps it up, over and over again. Only this older brother was fucking me. I'm telling mom.