We Learn Nothing: Essays and Cartoons (A Smart and Funny Essay Collection)

by Tim Kreider

respect people who had to quit drinking lest it kill them, but those who never saw the appeal of the stuff in the first place seem not quite to be trusted.)

you can start to see your life as something resembling a linear narrative, with an intelligible shape and possibly some meaning, instead of just a bunch of funny stories.

Drinking was, among other things, an excellent excuse to devote eight or ten consecutive hours to sitting idly around having hilarious conversations with friends, than which I’m still not convinced there is any better possible use of our time on earth.

The Soul Toupee is that thing about ourselves we are most deeply embarrassed by and like to think we have cunningly concealed from the world, but which is, in fact, pitifully obvious to everybody who knows us.

This is one of the things we rely on our friends for: to think better of us than we think of ourselves. It makes us feel better, but it also makes us be better; we try to be the person they believe we are.

What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.

It’s the divide between the Got Out and the Stayed Put.

It seems likely that in the future the coastal cities will resemble post-imperial nations like France—pleasant places to live with world-class museums and restaurants as souvenirs of their brief time at the top—while the heartland is already starting to look more like post-Soviet Russia, with crystal meth instead of vodka.

But people aren’t interested in lectures; they want to hear stories.