Do Not Enter

“Based on my experience of life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. And would go even further, to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you’ll probably make it worse.”

“You are fucked. You are desirous of getting unfucked. Unfucking is considerably more difficult than fucking. The Second Law of Thermodynamics - because if you were thinking even for a minute that you are better educated than I am and therefore superior, Bumhole, you were mistaken - does not look with kindness upon unfucking. The level of fuckedness in a system always increases unless something acts on it from the outside. Worse yet, Bumhole, you do not own your own fuckedness. You do not appreciate the fullness of the fucking which has happened to you. You cannot hope to amend your situation without knowing what it is.”

“My first awkward author run-in happened in line for Justin Cronin’s new book, The Twelve. I took a photo of him as he signed the book of the person in line in front of me. He noticed it, and told me to tweet my photo or put it on Facebook. My response was something along the lines of, “Well, according to an episode of Are You Afraid Of The Dark, the camera takes a piece of your soul every time a picture is taken of you. I’m going to tweet your soul!” His response was a curious little head-tilt that screamed I AM UNFAMILIAR WITH NICK AT NITE AND YOU ARE SEVERAL BITS OF STRANGE, to which I thought YOU WROTE A VAMPIRE ZOMBIE BOOK HUSH YOUR JUDGEY FICTIONAL THOUGHTS.”

“Heaven, Kiwi thought, would be the reading room of a great library. But it would be private. Cozy. You wouldn’t have to worry about some squeaky-shoed librarian turning the lights off on you or gauging your literacy by reading the names on your book spines, and there wouldn’t be a single other patron. The whole place would hum with a library’s peace, filtering softly over you like white bars of light…”

“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused, frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled moral and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”