It was a period in history when, for whatever reason, people by default ended up in Portland.

The notes and sketches were without exception more interesting than the final product.

Is your work keeping you young, or making you old?

A late summer afternoon that already feels over. There was a life here, wasn’t there? You can almost still hear it. A wedding; you gave a speech that left no impression. This is how it will be after you’re gone. As if it never happened.

The Steiner-Rand hierarchy of acceptance
+3. Reverence
+2. Gratitude
+1. Acceptance
+0. Indifference
–1. Resignation
–2. Resentment
–3. Bitterness

At one celebratory banquet, Mr. Aldrin was breathlessly asked, “Tell us how it really felt to be on the moon!” Afterward, he rushed outside into an alley and wept.

My participation in events to which I’d thought myself central, I came to realize, went mostly unnoticed.

When Rotten sang no future
this is what he meant

The best advice I ever got, although for a time I didn’t take it that way. It wasn’t offered in kindness—just a curt STFU.

A world held together by duct tape and magical thinking.