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Tao Lin Quotes | Quotes said by Tao Lin

  • Tao Lin Quote #1

    - ¿No te parece a veces que vivir en el mundo es como una mierda?
    - ¿A qué te refieres? - dijo Paul lentamente.
    - A ver... que lo que el mundo puede darnos no basta para satisfacernos.
    - No -dijo Paul al cabo de unos diez segundos, y se tapó la cara con las manos-. Quiero decir... el mundo está bien, y me baso en pruebas, porque no me he suicidado. Si me suicidara... podría decir que el mundo es malo, en general.
    - Definitivamente, vamos.
    - En general -dijo Paul sin apartar las manos-. Como las ganas de suicidarme no son tan fuertes como para que me suicide, el mundo es un lugar en el que vale la pena vivir.


  • Tao Lin Quote #2

    -Y ahora qué hacemos - dijo Paul cuando unos veinte minutos más tarde se marchaban del parque.
    Después de dar unos pasos en la calle, Daniel miró distraídamente en las dos direcciones y, con la vista al frente y expresión preocupada, dobló a la derecha en la acera.
    -Teníamos un objetivo específico, eso lo recuerdo -dijo Paul-. ¿Cuál era?
    - No lo sé - dijo Daniel al cabo de unos segundos.
    - Acabábamos de comentarlo.
    - Me acuerdo de algo -dijo Daniel con aire ausente.
    - Ah, sí , vender libros.
    - Vamos -dijo Daniel.
    - Habíamos olvidado nuestro propósito y acabamos de recuperarlo -dijo Paul sonriendo-. No teníamos ningún objetivo, pero aun así seguíamos avanzando al mismo ritmo.
    - Dios -dijo Daniel en voz baja.

  • Tao Lin Quote #3

    ...one had to expect very little—almost nothing—from life, Aaron knew, one had to be grateful, not always trying to seize the days like some maniac of living, but to give oneself up, be seized by the days, the months and years, be taken up in the froth of sun and moon, some pale and smoothie-ed river-cloud of life, a long, drawn-out, gray sort of enlightenment, so that when it was time to die, one did not scream swear words and knock things down, did not make a scene, but went easily with understanding and tact, and quietly, in a lightly pummeled way, having been consoled–having allowed to be consoled–by the soft, generous, worthlessness of it all, having allowed to be massaged by the daily beating of life, instead of just beaten.

  • Tao Lin Quote #4

    a kind of emptiness existed in the center of my bagel; really
    it was just the hole that's in the middle
    of all bagels; 'i need to go read my blog
    to find out what my politics are

  • Tao Lin Quote #5

    A partir de un determinado momento, advirtió Paul vagamente, la tecnología había pasado a señalarle únicamente el carácter ineludible y próximo de la nada. En vez de liberar nanobots en el torrente sanguíneo para reparar las cosas más rápidamente de lo que se deterioraban, implantar pequeños computadores en el cerebro de la gente o aplicar otros métodos que Paul había descubierto en la Wikipedia con intención de aplazar la muerte hasta convertirla en ese ente lejano y menguante y casi inexistente que entonces era la vida- y para que la vida, para los humanos inmortales, se convirtiera en la diversión preponderante que entonces era la muerte-, la tecnología parecía abocada a eliminar la vida para siempre cumpliendo incontroladamente su única función: convertir la materia, animada o inanimada, en materia computerizada con el único objeto, al parecer, de aumentar su funcionamiento hasta que el universo fuera un único ordenador. La tecnología, una abstracción indetectable en la realidad concreta, estaba llevando a cabo su tarea concreta, intuyó Paul débilmente mientras le acariciaba el pelo a Erin, gracias a una mano de obra humana, creciente y cada vez más entregada que, en el transcurso de cientos de generaciones, iba recibiendo lo que parecían anticipos (desde los pies a los coches pasando por las bicicletas, desde la cara a Internet hasta los tablones de anuncios) a cambio de convertir una cantidad suficiente de materia en materia computerizada para que los ordenadores pudieran ir construyéndose a sí mismos.

  • Tao Lin Quote #6

    As a child, she’d always had what she imagined were fascinating thoughts, but didn’t ever say them. Once, as a little girl, at recess, she thought that if she ran very fast at a pole and then caught it and swung quickly around, part of her would keep going, and she would become two girls.

  • Tao Lin Quote #7

    But then his parents changed. A year of California had changed them. They stopped sending money. Greg was forced to go out into the world, to interact with real people. And he was glad of this. He had always wanted to be a normal person. To be at ease in society. He had just been too scared to try. But now he was forced to, and so he did–he went and got a job at the public library. He was not quite a librarian, but close. Greg was a shelver. There would be carts of books to shelve, then there would be no more carts of books to shelve, then there would be carts of books to shelve.

    As a shelver, Greg felt that life was passing him by in a slow and distant, but massive, way–like the moon.

  • Tao Lin Quote #8

    Death is the end of the fear of death. [...] To avoid it we must not stop fearing it and so life is fear. Death is time because time allows us to move toward death which we fear at all times when alive. We move around and that is fear. Movement through space requires time. Without death there is no movement through space and no life and no fear. To be aware of death is to be alive is to fear is to move around in space and time toward death.

  • Tao Lin Quote #9

    does a society exist where it's become acceptable to wear 'helmets' enclosing one's entire head when in public to preempt social interaction

  • Tao Lin Quote #10

    Everyone is folding boxes. Andrew is folding boxes. If the entire job were to fold boxes people would scream. They would fold, and sometimes scream, existentially, then be dragged into a field and beaten into a paste. Sometimes there would be a killing rampage.

  • Tao Lin Quote #11

    Garret went across the street to the library. There was a hole in the sidewalk the size of a bathtub. Construction was being done, was always being done. It was the journey that mattered, Garret thought woozily, the getting-there part. The mayor, and then the president, had begun saying that. And where are we going? the mayor had asked. When will we get there? What will happen to us once we get there? He really wanted to know.

  • Tao Lin Quote #12

    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.

  • Tao Lin Quote #13

    He wanted to hide by shrinking past zero, through the dot at the end of himself, to a negative size, into an otherworld, where he would find a place— in an enormous city, too large to know itself, or some slowly developing suburb— to be alone and carefully build a life in which he might be able to begin, at some point, to think about what to do about himself.

  • Tao Lin Quote #14

    I won,” said Chelsea’s dad, and went to give Chelsea a high-five, but missed, as they were standing too close.

    “My fault,” he said. “That was my fault.”

    “Oh,” Chelsea said.

    And he stepped back a little and tried again, but Chelsea, distracted now by something—maybe the plant in the far corner, standing and waiting like a person in a dream; or maybe the green shoe or some other thing that was out there and longing, to be looked at, and taken—wasn’t ready, and their hands, his then hers, passed through the air in a kind of wave, a little goodbye.

  • Tao Lin Quote #15

    I'm not being secretive about anything. I just actually don't have opinions about society.

  • Tao Lin Quote #16

    In the parking lot, she drove and parked in a dark area with no other cars around. She reclined her seat, and listened to music. Outside there were trees, a ditch, a bridge; another parking lot. It was very dark. Maybe the Sasquatch would run out from the woods. Chelsea wouldn’t be afraid. She would calmly watch the Sasquatch jog into the ditch then out, hairy and strong and mysterious—to be so large yet so unknown; how could one cope except by running?—smash through some bushes, and sprint, perhaps, behind Wal-Mart, leaping over a shopping cart and barking. Did the Sasquatch bark? It used to alarm Chelsea that this might be all there was to her life, these hours alone each day and night—thinking things and not sharing them and then forgetting—the possibility of that would shock her a bit, trickily, like a three-part realization: that there was a bad idea out there; that that bad idea wasn’t out there, but here; and that she herself was that bad idea. But recently, and now, in her car, she just felt calm and perceiving, and a little consoled, even, by the sad idea of her own life, as if it were someone else’s, already happened, in some other world, placed now in the core of her, like a pillow that was an entire life, of which when she felt exhausted by aloneness she could crumple and fall towards, like a little bed, something she could pretend, and believe, even (truly and unironically believe; why not?), was a real thing that had come from far away, through a place of no people, a place of people, and another place of no people, as a gift, for no occasion, but just because she needed—or perhaps deserved; did the world try in that way? to make things fair?—it.

  • Tao Lin Quote #17

    It sometimes seemed to him that for love to work, it had to be fair, that he should tell only half the joke, and she the other half. Otherwise, it would not be love, but something completely else–pity or entertainment, or stand-up comedy.

  • Tao Lin Quote #18

    It was spring, not winter or autumn, Paul thought with some lingering confusion. He listened to the layered murmur of wind against leaves, familiarly and gently disorienting as a terrestrial sound track, reminding people of their own lives, then opened his MacBook—sideways, like a hardcover book—and looked at the internet, lying on his side, with his right ear pressed into his pillow, as if, unable to return to sleep, at least in position to hear what, in his absence, might be happening there.

  • Tao Lin Quote #19

    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.

  • Tao Lin Quote #20

    Lately, they were always reassuring each other that nothing was wrong; and probably it was true—life wasn’t supposed to be incredible, after all. Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some went straight to video.

  • Tao Lin Quote #21

    loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shape
    of a helicopter the same size as the helicopter
    and that's it's only skill
    and it isn't good enough
    but it's still amazing.

  • Tao Lin Quote #22

    Matt would stare at Andrew for 10 minutes. It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat.

  • Tao Lin Quote #23

    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.

  • Tao Lin Quote #24

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

  • Tao Lin Quote #25

    Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same.

  • Tao Lin Quote #26

    sad things are beautiful only from a distance
    therefore you just want to get away from them
    from a distance of one hundred and thirty years
    ....i'm going to distance myself until the world is beautiful

  • Tao Lin Quote #27

    that was bad; i shouldn't have done that

    to prevent you from entering a catatonic state
    i am going to maintain a calm facial expression
    with crinkly eyes and an overall friendly demeanor
    i believe in a human being that is not upset
    i believe if you are working i should not be insane
    or upset--why am i ever insane or upset and not working?
    i vacuumed the entire house this morning
    i cleaned the kitchen and the computer room
    and i made you a meat helmet with computer paper
    the opportunity for change exists in each moment, all moments are alone
    and separate from other moments, and there are a limited number of moments
    and the idea of change is a delusion of positive or negative thinking
    your hands are covering your face
    and your body moves like a statue
    when i try to manipulate an appendage
    if i could just get you to cry tears of joy one more time

  • Tao Lin Quote #28

    The late-afternoon sky, in Paul's peripheral vision, panoramic and mostly unobstructed, appeared rural or suburban, more indicative of forests and fields and lakes—of nature's vast connections, through the air and the soil, to more of itself—than of outer space, which was mostly what Paul thought of when beneath an urban sky, even in daytime, especially in Manhattan, between certain buildings, framing sunless zones of upper atmosphere, as if inviting space down to deoxygenate a city block.

  • Tao Lin Quote #29

    There was a metal rod inside of Colin. The rod went from his stomach to the middle of his head. It was made of steel and sugar, and had been dissolving inside of Colin for ten or fifteen years, slow and sweet, above and behind his tongue; and he could taste it in that way, like an aftertaste, removed and seeping and outside of the mouth. Sometimes he’d glimpse it with the black, numb backs of his eyes. But what he really wanted was to wrench it out. Cut it up and chew it. Or melt it. Bathe in the hard, sweet lava of it.

  • Tao Lin Quote #30

    There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.

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