My Year of Rest and Relaxation

The Death of Marat was one of my favorite paintings. A man stabbed to death in the bathtub.

Die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Who said that?

I had no big plan to become a curator, no great scheme to work my way up a ladder. I was just trying to pass the time.

Walking up First Avenue, everything made me cringe. I was like a baby being born—the air hurt, the light hurt, the details of the world seemed garish and hostile.

And that was exactly what I wanted—my emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep past me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again.

“Hello,” was as far as I got in our hypothetical dialogue.

Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.

Asian girlfriend means the guy has a small dick,

I thought life would be more tolerable if my brain were slower to condemn the world around me.

was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you’d feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide.