Sean Stevens > Recent Status Updates

Penn has a great existential premise and the humor in the writing plays to his narrative strengths as the pemiere television rancouteur/magician/cultural commentator so it stands to reason that the audiobook is truly the best way to consume this. Even when it feels during the 3rd act he doesn't know how to end the story it's a lot of fun to be in his head.

“The stumbling block will turn out to be the traditional one for students of consciousness: the flashlight is incapable of shining on itself, so we can't trust what its light reveals.”

"Paranoid art, unlike paranoid persons, also distrusts itself. And so, paranoid art is the ultimate opposite, the urgent opposite, of complacent art.”

“On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.”

“It would take her thousands of steps to get anywhere, but she would get there easily, and when she arrived, in the present, it would seem like it had been a single movement that brought her there. Did existence ever seem worked for? One seemed simply to be here, less an accumulation of moments than a single arrangement continuously gifted from some inaccessible future.”

“On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.”

“Nice" said Paul staring transfixed at Fran's delicate and extreme gaze, like that of a skeleton with eyeballs, or a person with their face peeled off.”

“...and sleepily thought of how technology was no longer the source of wonderment and possibility it had been...”

“Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive than he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored”

“Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive that he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored.”

Paul thought of Taipei as a fifth season, or “otherworld,” outside, or in equal contrast with, his increasingly familiar and self-consciously repetitive life in America, where it seemed like the seasons, connecting in right angles, for some misguided reason, had formed a square, sarcastically framing nothing”

“Feeling distant was both lonely and comfortable.”

“Summer suits me because whatever will happen won’t linger. Once the creaking light and humid air clears, it all seems like a lie.”

“Passion is something that occurs naturally. Yet when the time comes, I make it occur artificially. That seems different to ordinary enthusiasm. Distorted. There’s something forced and unnatural about it. I can cool it down at will. For me there’s little distance between loving and hating someone.”

“In an incoherent, inconsistent world, some exorbitant happiness could always come along. I trembled at the premonition. I was in a world of man-made magic.”

“I couldn’t tell what pleasure was anymore. At first you get high to feel good or check out. Then, once you’re using it regularly, it stops feeling good. Your brain can’t check out, it doesn’t get you there. But you don’t learn, you keep taking it just to escape the withdrawal. To forget the chilling despair you feel when you sober up.”

“the same night will continue on.Today is just yesterday,continued. Tomorrow is just today, continued. Day breaks, night falls, day breaks. Night probably falls again.The little details differ, sure.But for the most part, everything is pretty much the same, and I feel neither more nor less sluggish today than I did last Thursday.I am sluggish But still compelled to dance. Provided there’s some variety to the music”

"When your world breaks, your self also breaks. But for me, the world’s always been broken. It’s all chaotic, out of my control. I’m sure that’s why I try to sort and organise it so much. I want to have it all contained in the palm of my hand."

“He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.”

“Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise, this grand marketplace lovingly stocked with every sublime thing.”

“Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.”

“I was in error when I saw him as fixed and stable and thought I would have him forever. He was never fixed, nor stable, but always just a passing, temporary energy-burst.”

“No one who has ever done anything worth doing has gone uncriticized.”

“Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.”

"Goodness, are you a child! He is, isn't he? "

"He’s peeled me like an onion. Surrounded by the leavings of my own sallow skin, I’ve dwindled to nothing, and my eyes smart."

“In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way.For an actor this would be anathema it would destroy the illusion but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song

“Does asking oneself these questions in an attempt to see how the machine works spoil the enjoyment? It hasn’t for me. Music isn’t fragile. Knowing how the body works doesn’t take away from the pleasure of living.”

“Music can get us through difficult patches in our lives by changing not only how we feel about ourselves, but also how we feel about everything outside ourselves.”