Jeffrey Baker

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“I'm saying the structure and f the entire culture is flawed, chip said. I'm saying the bureaucracy has arrogated the right to define certain states of mind as 'diseased.' A lack of desire to spend money becomes a symptom of disease that requires expensive medication. Which medication then destroys the libido, in other words destroys the appetite for the one pleasure in life that's free, which means the person has to spend more money on compensatory pleasures. The very definition of mental health is the ability to participate in the consumer economy. When you buy into therapy, you're buying into buying. And I'm saying that I personally am losing the battle with a commercialized, medicalized, totalitarian, modernity right this instant.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

“The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They want to know they matter. They may brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. It’s a sacrifice, of sorts.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“The same river can never be crossed twice. The flowing water has no memory of footprints.”
― Robert R. McCammon, The Five