Nate > Recent Status Updates

I guess you can only understand the significance of that if you were a small, weak kid, like I was. At that age, human beings are animals. The biggest and strongest rule over the small and weak; no justification needed or sought, it's instinctively recognized as the way things are--and should be; the small, weak kid doesn't doubt the validity of the system, he just thinks it's unfair he was born little.

"What I like to do is to turn 90 degrees from something that's headed towards sentimental and undercut it.

"That's a very Jewish sensibility.

"The Jews have always had something amusing to say while they're getting the shit kicked out of them."

The entire prison seemed to join in the sympathetic reception accorded me. The question was frequently asked, sometimes sneeringly by the guards, and sometimes in a spirit of wonder ans admiration, by what magic I held the interest of my fellow prisoners and won their affection and devotion. The answer is a quite simple one. I recognized in each of them my brother and treated him accordingly.

"Then what does? Control our destinies, I mean."
"The only external forces that have any influence on us are those we can see every day: the smile, the frown, the fist, the brick wall. What you call 'destiny' is merely a semantic fallacy, the attribution of purpose to blind causality. Insofar as any of us are compelled to resist the flow of random events, we are driven solely by internal drives and forces."

"Even if the end's not what you wanted, the path getting there is never for naught. Just like the snow, all your efforts will pile up someday." -Shia

Slowly, in the midst of the interviews, actual insight about humor writing presents itself....

The entirety of chapter 4 of this book is worth reading and applying to any pursuit, really.