Quote

It sometimes seemed to him that for love to work, it had to be fair, that he should tell only half the joke, and she the other half. Otherwise, it would not be love, but something completely else–pity or entertainment, or stand-up comedy.

Tao Lin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tao Lin
Age: 41
Born: 1983
Born: July 2
Novelist
Poet
Writer
City of Alexandria
Virginia
Would
Comedy
Pity
Love
Stand
Fairs
Half
Fair
Tell
Entertainment
Else
Otherwise
Sometimes
Seemed
Work
Jokes
Something
Completely
Joke

More quotes by Tao Lin

Image
On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.
Tao Lin
Image
I usually have Kafka biography in my bathroom. It's a book I can open at random and feel interested in immediately. It's really funny. With this book, since I'm opening it at random and immediately interested, I don't feel the need to read more than I want to read, in that there's not, like, a plot that leads me along. So I can stop whenever.
Tao Lin
Image
One seemed simply to be here, less an accumulation of moments than a single arrangement continuously gifted from some inaccessible future.
Tao Lin
Image
Focusing on being a person instead of an Asian or an [anything] seems to promote a worldview that encourages people to treat others based on what each person has specifically done in their life, which seems like it would reduce such things as war, racism, unfairness, hate crimes, [other things most people feel aversion toward].
Tao Lin
Image
If you're, like, a PhD student in English, and you look at each instance that Richard Yates is mentioned in the book...it has sort of it's own narrative that one could analyze and write literary criticism about.
Tao Lin
Image
The correct arrangement of words will make these bad feelings go away tonight.
Tao Lin
Image
It seems like I'm not [happy]. Because if you look at my tweets and what I think and say, it seems like I'm worried about what's going to happen.
Tao Lin
Image
I just keep investing in the future, and I haven't reached the point where I'm not doing that.
Tao Lin
Image
loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shape of a helicopter the same size as the helicopter and that's it's only skill and it isn't good enough but it's still amazing.
Tao Lin
Image
We have been sitting here all night bullshitting and we still don’t know what to do.
Tao Lin
Image
I like reading books where people with a lot of money use it to do whatever they want. Like stay in expensive hotels and do whatever drugs they want and fly wherever they want.
Tao Lin
Image
It seems like most people will agree that they would like if they were treated by other people based on what they have concretely done in their life, not what other people have done, with their lives.
Tao Lin
Image
Novels–and memoirs–are perhaps the most comprehensive reports humans can deliver, of their private experiences, to other humans. In these terms there is only one kind of novel: a human attempt to transfer or convey some part or version of their world of noumenon to another’s world of noumenon.
Tao Lin
Image
I think mostly the commodifying comes after I've done something that has some other value to me.
Tao Lin
Image
Regarding drugs: just the existence of drugs seems troubling to me.
Tao Lin
Image
I actually don't have...opinions. I'm not being secretive about anything. I just actually don't have opinions about society. I can discern that certain things have an effect on certain other things but I don't view those effects as good or bad.
Tao Lin
Image
I think Gmail chats are different than IRL conversations because Gmail chats are saved by Gmail exactly as they occurred. I like texts and emails. Seems like I don't have anything to say that isn't obvious about texts, emails, and Gmail chats.
Tao Lin
Image
Life has never died, which is something that I think people ignore.
Tao Lin
Image
Lately, they were always reassuring each other that nothing was wrong and probably it was true—life wasn’t supposed to be incredible, after all. Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some went straight to video.
Tao Lin
Image
I don't know what Douglas Coupland thinks about his writing. I've read maybe one page of one of his books and didn't think I was similar to him. But it seems like people just compare you to anyone, pretty much.
Tao Lin