Mars Nicoli

“Paul liked to pick out the secretly cool people, people too cool to flash their coolness. The cool people were not always or even usually the same as the shiny people. Often someone shiny was too conventionally good-looking to be cool but they were still compelling, in terms of sheer wattage. Paul knew he wasn't good-looking enough to be shiny, but he could be cool in certain contexts. Cool was relational and conceptual; cool took work, cool was a meritocracy which, with all its flaws, he still preferred to the aristocracy of genetics.”
― Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”
― Oscar Wilde

“and that was art and so didn't count”
― Andrea Lawlor, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

“He considered himself a good man, and always did his best to avoid passing judgement on others, but deep down he had an unshakeable conviction that all rich people were deeply, deeply stupid.”
― Jonathan Sims, Thirteen Storeys