Let's not beat around the bush: human feelings can be ridiculous. Thinking back to that moment, to how I felt at the realization that my stepfather w… - Steve Toltz

You may have all the money in the world, Mr. Hobbs, I thought, you might own the whole universe and its particles thereof, you might gain interest on the stars and reap dividends from the moon, but I'm young and you're old and I have something you don't - a future.

What a nasty act of cruelty, giving a dying man his last wish. Don't you realize he doesn't want it? His real wish is not to die.

The worst thing you can say about someone in a society like ours is that they can't hold down a job. It conjures images of unshaven losers with weak grips watching sadly as the jobs slip free and float away. There's nothing we respect more than work, and there's nothing we denigrate more than the unwillingness to work, and if someone wants to dedicate himself to painting or writing poetry, he'd better be holding down a job at a hamburger restaurant if he knows what's good for him.