Paul Neilan > Quotes

“Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore.”
― Paul Neilan

“The world is your oyster...
...too bad you're allergic to shellfish.”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories

“It was nice of her to want to believe the best about me. People tend to do that with the strangers they're fucking. If she wanted to think that apathy and independence were the same thing, good for her. Maybe she was right.”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories

“And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it.”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories

“at first I thought you were just using me" she said
"I definitely am." I just wasn't sure for what.
"Asshole!" she said, and punched me in the side. And she laughed as my kidney began to hemorrhage.

That's the beauty of honesty. Everyones so unused to hearing it they just assume you're kidding, and you get to feel very good and forthcoming without suffering any consequences except for traces of blood in your urine for the next day or two.”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories

“Sitting on my stool I thought of a bumper sticker: "If Mean People Suck, Why Isn't My Dick In Your Mouth?”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories

“If stealing a few saltshakers was wrong I didn't want to be right.”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories

“In the long term everyone traffics in foregone conclusions, and in the short term they just get drunk. This is the way it has always been. Some half-assed ambiguity masquerading as mystery is all anybody's really looking for.”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories

“If Tolstoy were alive today and working at Panopticon Insurance, he'd say that all insurance companies are the same, then throw himself through an eighteenth story window and plunge to his death in a hail of glass and shattered dignity" (70).”
― Paul Neilan

“The fan was spinning and as the shadows passed over the white ceiling I let my eyes unfocus until all of it looked like a universe being born or a planet unraveling, some creation or catastrophe depending on which way gravity was going and where you were standing. So instead of Elizabeth Taylor I thought about stars and how little I knew about them, and how if I was an explorer and I had to sail a boat across the ocean without rador or an electronic compass I’d be screwed because the only constellations I knew were the Big Dipper and Little Dipper and I always got them confused. And even though I knew I’d never have to sail that boat I still wished I knew more about stars and other things. And I wished I could remember lying in the back yard as a kid with my hands locked behind my head, looking up at the night sky and dreaming. But I couldn’t, because it wasn’t something I ever did. It would have been a nice memory though”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories

“It’s like someone who prays every night saying God’s a good listener. Just because you’re talking to us doesn’t mean we’re listening. With me and God, you never really know.”
― Paul Neilan, Apathy and Other Small Victories