Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs.

Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries.

If you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis.

We want our idols to be dead because it makes death a much less scary place.

When future archaeologists dig up the remains of California, they're going to find all of those gyms their scary-looking gym equipment, and they're going to assume that we were a culture obsessed with torture.

Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.

We need to be around our families not because we have so many shared experiences to talk about, but instead because they know precisely which subjects to avoid.

Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next.

Once you establish a look, and once everybody recognizes that look as your look, you never have to think about fashion again.

What if God exists except it turns out he doesn't really like people very much?

With Google I'm starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.

God is what keeps us together after the love is gone.

In the future, torture will once again become the recreational sport of the rich.

It also allows you to look as though you're not particularly from the present, future or past, either.

We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.

What exactly is it that humans do that is specifically human? There has to be something. How odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people.

I find it hard to believe that human beings are the crowning achievement of life on earth. Something better than us has to come along.

On TV people look at your hair and then they look at your skin, and then they look at your clothes, and by the time they're listening to what you're saying, you're off the screen.

Where does personality end and brain damage begin?

Men won't read any email from a woman that's over 200 words long.

The future and eternity are two entirely different things.

If nothing else, we simply get used to being alive.

Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.

I've got 911 on speed dial.

A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out.

Lottery tickets are a surtax on desperation.

There's nothing cure or funny or lovable about being cheap. It's a total turn-off.

New York is a theme park for people with IQs over 108.

Telling people they look relaxed makes them look relaxed.

Once you see someone lose it, you can never look at them the same way again.

The harder you try to become the opposite of your parents, the more quickly you become them.

Star Trek characters never go shopping.

The person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.

You can only fall in love six times in your life. Choose wisely.

I know it's not cat food, but what exactly is it that they put inside of tinned ravioli?

It's weird when people start sentences with 'frankly' - as if their other sentences don't count.

Thinking you're immortal is weirdly similar to being immortal.

People say if you're doing an art project, that's different from a book, but I honestly don't see it. I try and try, and I just don't.

My house. It's kind of eccentric. It's two decades worth of accumulated personal projects. Yeah, it is pretty dense in my house.

In my mind, I've always checked out in 2037; that's always been my expiration date. I'll be 75.

I think half the people who get married now have met online. If I think about all the people in my life who married - they met online, online, online. And it makes sense if you think about it, because you fill out this form of 35 things that really define you and - bam - look, you've got two people who match. It works.

I think most people either forget or don't know that Microsoft only hires people with I.Q.'s well over 130.

In Canada, we're happy to provide a safe haven for next-door neighbors in the middle of a marital dispute. And if anyone trips while crossing the border, we're happy to set their broken bones for free.

Nobody likes being told who or what they are.

I'm agoraphobic. I can't deal with crowds.

Any passion to collect has some meaning behind it.

The way we experience history and time in all its forms shifted quite massively between 1989 and 2001 - to the point where contrivances like decades are now kind of silly.

I tend to look for pathologies everywhere.

We were never supposed to live until 40. We were built to self-destruct at 30, whether from cancer or mental illness. We're all going way beyond our expiration date.

When you write, it's just a much more crystalline, compressed version of the voice you think with - though not the one you speak with. I think your writing voice is your laser-guided missile. It's the poetry part of you.