Tao Lin Quotes

“He walked out into the night, thinking languageless thoughts...He ran suddenly across a street. At night, he knew, there could be the belief that something never before felt might be felt, something new. You could allow yourself quite easily this view of the world--this thrilling, midnightly faith--of there being something out there that loved you, that, at night, worshipped and searched for you, like a past life seeking its next, wanting desperately the continuation of itself. And though it would probably never find you, it would also, you believed at night, never give up, and this was enough--that something was out there and desperate and on its way.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“Life is meaningless. Everyone knows this. Look at Fernando Pessoa. He knew the most that life was meaningless. But he was always worrying about things. If life was really meaningless you wouldn’t worry about things”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“i recommend the phrase 'pineapple ass”
― Tao Lin

“This was a place impossible for romance, a place where tea was brewed, earnestly, from paint chips, glass shards, and small change. In this world, Sean knew, one could put faith in a toe bone, a blood bone, a cartilage of eye--all the unloved contributors of one's own body world.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“She felt strange. For a moment it seemed to her that the day was already over--she was in bed, asleep, and then it was the next day and now here she was again. 'Oh,' she said.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“Everyone stared...at their own hands, or else abstractedly at the wall, as there had become in the room a feeling of immobilization, something of both nostalgia and doom--a sort of gigantic helplessness...an unpleasant urge to stay still for a very long time, forever, perhaps, not saying or thinking anything, but just accepting one another, entering and absorbing and maybe, finally, somehow--with anonymity, osmosis, conjecture, and luck--then, experiencing one another.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“It’s depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“I made her admit she liked me. She likes me. But we’re too alike. When you’re with someone and neither of you can stop saying good things. Then you both get very aware that life will end soon. I think that’s why we don’t talk that much.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“Patched-together or hard-won coverings of positivity flew away with ridiculous suddenness, like hats, or else gradually and unceremoniously, over days, like paint.”
― Tao Lin, Leave Society