Mop Men Quotes

“I have always felt that suicide was connected to communication. Not due to a lack of opportunity, but to an impossibility to communicate and be understood. It can be frustrating to try to share something with somebody, something important and real to you, and see in the face of another person that he doesn't care or, worse still, simply doesn't understand you. Of course, it is inevitable that this will happen from time to time, but imagine if it were always that way. Imagine if every time you tried to communicate and connect with another human being you fell short. If you never make any sense to anybody, if you never connect, you hold no value: you are truly alone. There are those who can survive as genuine outsiders, and then there are those who can't.”
― Alan Emmins, Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners

“I'm sorry, we can't come to the phone right now 'cause we're dead. Feel free to leave a message, but if we don't get back to you, it's probably 'cause we're dead. Have a nice day now.”
― Alan Emmins, Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners

“I am truly amazed that every time Apple comes out with a new laptop I am quickly able to identify (in my mind) a real need for it, as in the case of the recent European launch of the new MacBook Air. Which is odd as my existing MacBook is but six months old. But you understand, I can't fit my current model into an A4 envelope, hence I have rather successfully established the 'need.”
― Alan Emmins, Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners

“If you never make any sense to anybody, if you never connect, you hold no value: you are truly alone.”
― Alan Emmins, Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners

“Freud wrote that as humans we are driven by two conflicting fundamental desires: the life drive, which concerns itself with survival (reproduction, hunger, thirst, and sex) and the death drive. The death drive represents an intrinsic urge in all of us to return to a state of calm: to an inorganic or dead state. The death drive moves us toward extreme pleasure, which in Freud’s opinion is a state of nothingness; it’s the result of a complete reduction in stimuli, the state a body enters after having been exposed to extremity. Pushed by chaos and noise, sought out by our own desires, any one of us could make the leap to calmer waters. Any one of us is capable of suicide and actually has a built-in desire for the peace it would bring. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus introduces his”
― Alan Emmins, Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners