Here are some profound excerpts from the ornate brown and gold notebook. The first words in this book are, “A black paradise.”

• I know I am in love when she and I stare into the sky.
• Specious conclusion: that you deserve a second chance just because you screwed up the first one.
• I was wrong to think we were part of each other.
• Write more, think more, be more.
• The kindness of winter: its cruelty pushed away all other cruelty.
• Going a little crazy? Give me something to do.
• An artist creates his own moral Universe.
• Letting it be quiet.
• Perception of blackness is a surrogate for perception of nothingness.
• Women become an abstraction.
• Validity of despair: only if it is tied to something creative.
• There are so many ugly people in the world, in so many senses of the word ugly.
• Don’t waste time justifying yourself to those who can’t justify themselves.
• Certain shameful things give us those feelings because they so deeply, secretly excite us.
• Has every moment been like this? I am refining my vision of destruction.
• The fundamental solution to the core problems of humanity: to act properly as an individual.
• Objectivity: the impossible objective.
• The future is your only choice.
• Bachelorhood: the freedom to joylessly masturbate to the uninspired pornography of your imagination.
• “Richard,” she said, “you must be so lonely.”
• You can’t believe in God based on what you lack.
• Always just tell me the truth.
• There is nothing more beautiful than tears.
• It may be an insane place, but it is mine alone.
• Possibly the best thing about my apartment: you’re not here.
• I don’t want your apology; I just want you to shut the fuck up.
• What sets me apart from the millions who toil like Sysyphus every day, pointlessly churning out paperwork or rubber dogshit or the culture of disease and excess? What sets me above?
• Only nature seems fair, because even when it destroys you, it does so without judgement.
• Christianity’s most arrogant assumption: that God needs us.
• I spit, and hear no splash in the bottomless pit of your life.
• The biggest crime is failing to face the truth, to say, “Here I am.”
• Time can only take you so far down the road, and then there is a fork.
• “No talking to imaginary people.” -Sign in New Orleans restaurant The Hummingbird, circa 1991.
• Time is the illusion.
• Words slip away, but an act of affection speaks louder.
• Midnight is not the enemy.
• My vision for the ascendancy of man is one in which the masses are able to stop acting like children, which 99% of them do 99% of the time now, and finally behave as adults in every sense. Adults don’t need their fears.
• My friends are not the enemy.
• When the night settles around me, nothing can touch me.
• How dark can it get?
• Your dreams know who you are.
• A hurt I cannot name: words are not sufficient for this pain.
• I am not the enemy.
• Have the strength to be happy.
• No matter how much they sympathize, they can’t feel it with you, or for you. You must feel it alone.
• There is a big difference between letting yourself feel sad and making yourself feel sad.
• Confusion is not a feeling.
• Women are not the enemy.
• I don’t have to get what I need. I am what I need.
• You run home to your spiritual mommy.
• You are the enemy.

There. Now I can sleep.