What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.

You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

So, I know that she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison’s last words were: “It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.

i am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. those seem to be the two choices, everything else is just killing time.

when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.

i feel my life is so scattered right now. like it's all these small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. but talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. like things could actually make sense. you completely unscatter me, and i appreciate that so much.

It's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that you would want to be with someone just because they're pretty. Like choosing breakfast cereal based on color instead of taste.

Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will... But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all.

Maybe all the strings inside him broke.

Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.

What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.

i don’t want to be thin or conventionly beautiful or straight or brilliant. no, what i really want - and what i never get - is to be appreciated. do you know what it’s like to work so hard to make sure everyone’s happy, and to have not a single person recognize it?… because every morning when i wake up, i have to convince myself that, yes, by the end of the day, i will be able to do something good. thats all i ask - to be able to do something good.

i can’t help thinking that ‘getting a life’ is something only a complete idiot could believe. like you can just drive to a store and get a life. see it in its shiny box and look inside the plastic window and catch a glimpse of yourself in a new life and say, ‘wow, i look much happier - i think this is the life i need to get!’ take it to the counter, ring it up, put it on your credit card. if getting a life was that easy, we’d be one blissed-out race. but we’re not. so it’s like, mom, your life isn’t out there waiting, so don’t think all you have to do is find it and get it. no, your life is right here. and, yeah, it sucks. lives usually do. so if you want things to change, you don’t need to get a life. you need to get off your ass.

Weltschmerz. It’s the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be… Because everyone thinks it should be possible to just keep falling and falling forever, to feel the rush of air on your face as you fall, that air pulling your face into a brilliant goddamned smile. And that should be possible. You should be able to fall forever.