We are disclosing animals, wired for unburdening. It’s what we do as a species. When I am being told, I listen, mindful of the honor, remembering all the while that the shore would be mistaken to believe that the waves lap up against him because he is so beautiful.

— David Rakoff

David Rakoff Quotes

In my brief glimpse of what is to come I realize how little I care to witness it. I have seen the future and I’m fairly relieved to say, it looks nothing like me.

— David Rakoff

One of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind.

— David Rakoff

I am going to the bad place, as is my wont.

— David Rakoff

I do not go outdoors. Not more than I have to. As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.

— David Rakoff

I find life itself provides ample and sufficient tests of my valor and mettle: illness; betrayal; fruitless searches for love; working for the abusive, the insane, and the despotic. All challenges easily as thrilling to me as scrambling over icy rock in a pair of barely adequate boots.

— David Rakoff

Betrayal

Simplicity, it seems, has always been wasted on those who simply cannot appreciate it.

— David Rakoff

There is supercomputer somewhere in the Nevada desert whose sole function is to count the number of times that I have said the following, because it is unquantifiable by human minds at this point, but this time it’s really true: I should have stayed home.

— David Rakoff

Almost any age is better than twenty-two.

— David Rakoff

I had a tumor. But it was great.

— David Rakoff

You can’t win all the contests and then lose at one contest and say, ‘Why am I not winning this contest as well?’ It’s random. So truthfully, again, do I wish it weren’t me? Absolutely. I still can’t make that logistic jump to thinking there’s a reason why it shouldn’t be me.

— David Rakoff

I have so little control over the act of writing that it’s all I can do to remain conscious.

— David Rakoff

There’s nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.

— David Rakoff

This brings up yet another, far more important misconception: that being comically generative and having a sense of humor are one and the same thing. The former is among the least important things in the world, while the latter is among the most. One is a handy social tool, the other an integral component of human survival. It bears repeating a third time: Not being funny doesn’t make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does.

— David Rakoff

There will be peaks of great joy from which to crow and vales of tears out of which to climb. When and why they will happen, no one can say, but they will happen. To all of us. We will all go back and forth from one to the other countless times during a lifetime. This is not some call to bipartisanship between inimical sides. The Happy and the Sad are the same population.

— David Rakoff

The collective delusion here is overwhelming narcissism posing as altruism.

— David Rakoff

I think what it means is that central to living A life that is good is a life that’s forgiving.

— David Rakoff

But thanks to my rapidly dividing cells, I no longer have that feeling – although I remember it very well – that if I just buckled down to the great work at hand, lived more authentically, stopped procrastinating, cut out sugar, then my best self was just there right around the corner. Yeah, no. I’m done with all that. I.

— David Rakoff

Why not be a communist, she thinks, if it means that kind of belonging?

— David Rakoff

In the right situation, highly formalized, high-suction ass-kissing not only comes all too naturally to me, it makes me breathless with a feeling of penitential power.

— David Rakoff

Maybe there is some solace to be derived in that: bacchanal or funeral, after enough time, the detritus looks the same.

— David Rakoff

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