Choke A Novel

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual...”

“It sounds as if you'd like to be God.”

“The lucky ones are just born dead.”

“After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.”

“There's still a thousand places I haven't gone to die.”

“What's up with you? How come you're being like this?' Because it's the truth. This is the world we live in.”

“Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring asshole and proud of it.”

“I am the child of a lunatic. Not a child of God.”

“...Because love is confusing and strange and difficult and uncomfortable and unbelievable inconvenient. But above all, love is transcendent.”

“The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.”

“You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.”

“By the time you're thirty, your worst enemy is yourself.”

“The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Woo...”

“Maybe the truth is I really want to like you instead.”

“Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.”

“Because supposedly those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”

“some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.”