There is something inside all boys that drives us to go away again and again and again.
People fear what they can not understand and what they can not control.
I was thinking. What if the world was like one of those Russian nesting dolls? What if we only saw one surface of it, the outside, but there was all kinds of other stuff going on, too? All the time. Underneath. But we just don’t see it, even if we’re part of it? Even if we’re in it? And what if you had a chance to see a different layer, like flipping a channel or something? Would you want to look? Even if what you saw looked like hell? Or worse?
Expired condoms are like nuclear waste: there’s nothing sensible you can do with it.
I suppose the things that transform your life don’t appear as you fancifully imagine they will.
There’s no prison worse than “I promise.
The end of the world was one week old and it was getting out of hand.
I came unglued and went back together the wrong way and fell apart again.
I stomped to the door, which was dumb because nobody can hear teenagers stomping in space. What’s the point stopping if no one can hear you?
When you think about it, the universe is nothing but this vast knackery of churning black holes and exploding stars, constantly free atoms that collect together and become something else, and something else again.
I was certain about this: In the best new language, there would be no words for me or you. Those words have caused all the trouble started by the old languages. In any new language, there should only be we.
I hold together pretty well, considering how much my atoms have been through.
I always bring back books for the library. Books have everything in them. After the end of the world, you cannot learn a goddamned thing from a computer or a television screen.
What kind of world did our fathers abandon us to?
In the Apollo moon program of the late 1960s, the quality and variety of space food was greatly improved. Hot water was available for rapid reconstitution of freeze-dried foods, and the taste of the foods was much better. The astronauts carried “spoon bowls,” pressurized plastic containers that could be opened with a plastic zipper and the contents eaten with a spoon. Because it had a high moisture content, the food clung to the spoon, making eating seem closer to the earthbound experience.
When I think about my life, I’m always thinking, ‘I hope I live long enough to do all the stories I know.’ And I know I’m not gonna, ’cos I got a list over there and it keeps getting a little bit longer.
All good books are about everything, abbreviated.
Worry and regret are both useless weights that provide no drag. They never did anything to slow down the planet for one goddamned second.
It was so pleasant, chaotic, emotionless, nameless-everything vibrating so beautifully in the universe without words.
Sometimes books imitate life. And sometimes books imitate lives that imitate books.