“Perfection all the time would drive them mad. For every perfect little town, there's something ugly underneath. No dream without the nightmare.”

“Perfection all the time would drive them mad. For every perfect little town, there's something ugly underneath. No dream without the nightmare.”

“Jack, I’m just telling you, if it turns out. . .I want you to shoot me.”“Dee—”"I’m not kidding, not exaggerating, just telling you that I do not have it in me to handle that.”“You have a daughter, too. You don’t have the luxury not to handle shit.”

“The first handkerchief was tied to a second, yellow handkerchief. He fed both through the window and kept pulling. Attached to it was a red one. Then a green one. “Go away, you goddamn clown!” Jenny ordered. But Benny the Clown continued to pull out handkerchief after handkerchief. Five…ten…fifteen…then… That’s not a handkerchief.”

“When you were a child, I didn't tell you about the evil in the world, all that lay in wait.”

“I've seen so many versions of you. With me. Without me. Artist. Teacher. Graphic designer. But it's all, in the end, just life. We see it macro, like one big story, but when you're in it, it's all just day-to-day, right? And isn't that what you have to make your peace with?”

“Suspicion leads to bias, and bias doesn't lead to truth.”

“Imagine you’re a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you’d have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you’re a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of.”

“It's a troubling paradox - I have total control, but only to the extent I have control over myself.”

“The search for meaning was the cornerstone of human disquiet.”

“The box isn't all that different from life. If you go in with fear, fear is what you'll find.”