BY: It's not the idea behind Christianity I'm faulting, or Judaism, or any religion. It's the professionals who've made it into corporate business. There's big money in the god racket, big money. The basic teachings of Jesus are quite wonderful. So, by the way, is the original intention of Karl Marx. What could be bad? Everybody should share equally. Do unto others. Democracy. Government by the people. All great ideas. These are all great ideas, but they all suffer from one fatal flaw. They're all based on the fallacious notion that people are fundamentally decent. Give them a chance to do right and they'll take it. They're not stupid, selfish, greedy, cowardly, short-sighted worms.

BY: My story is, whatever works. You know, as long as you don't hurt anybody. Any way you can filch a little joy in this cruel, dog-eat-dog, pointless, black chaos.

BY: What the hell does it all mean anyhow? Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nothing comes to anything. And yet, there's no shortage of idiots to babble. Not me. I have a vision. I'm discussing you. Your friends. Your coworkers. Your newspapers. The TV. Everybody's happy to talk. Full of misinformation. Morality, science, religion, politics, sports, love, your portfolio, your children, health. Christ, if I have to eat nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day to live, I don't wanna live. I hate goddamn fruits and vegetables. And your omega 3's, and the treadmill, and the cardiogram, and the mammogram, and the pelvic sonogram, and oh my god the-the-the colonoscopy, and with it all the day still comes where they put you in a box, and its on to the next generation of idiots, who'll also tell you all about life and define for you what's appropriate. My father committed suicide because the morning newspapers depressed him. And could you blame him? With the horror, and corruption, and ignorance, and poverty, and genocide, and AIDS, and global warming, and terrorism, and-and the family value morons, and the gun morons. “The horror,” Kurtz said at the end of Heart of Darkness, “the horror.” Lucky Kurtz didn't have the Times delivered in the jungle. Ugh… then he'd see some horror. But what do you do? You read about some massacre in Darfur or some school bus gets blown up, and you go “Oh my God, the horror,” and then you turn the page and finish your eggs from the free range chickens. Because what can you do. It's overwhelming! I tried to commit suicide myself. Obviously, it didn't work out. But why do you even want to hear about all this? Christ, you got your own problems. I'm sure your all obsessed with any number of sad little hopes and dreams. Your predictably unsatisfying love lives, your failed business ventures. “Oh, if only I'd bought that stock! If only I-if only I purchased THAT house years ago! If only I'd made a move on THAT woman.” If this, if that. You know what? Gimmie a break with your could have's and should have's. Like my mother used to say, “If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a trolley car.” My mother didn't have wheels. She had varicose veins. Still, the woman gave birth to a brilliant mind. I was considered for a Nobel Prize in physics… I didn't get it. But, you know, its all politics. It's like every other phony honor. Incidentally, don't think I'm-I'm bitter because of some personal setback. By the standards of a mindless, barbaric civilization, I've been pretty lucky. I was married to a beautiful woman who had family money. For years we lived on Beekman Place. I taught at Columbia. String theory.

BY: I'm too tired to prolong this brutal exchange between a bedraggled microbe and a Nobel-level thinker.

MC: You really think I'm beautiful? BY: I admit I didn't give you your full due at first, physically. However, as only a great mind can do, I've reassessed my position, and changed my mind.

BY: The minute a person dies, he's a smoker or overweight. Hey, I got news for yoy, thin non-smokers die, too.

BY: Unbelievable. The chance factor in life is mind-boggling. You entered the world by a random event somewhere along the Mississippi. I, having emerged through the conjoining of Sam and Yetta Yellnikoff in the Bronx, decades earlier. And through an astronomical concatenation of circumstances, our paths cross. Two runaways in the vast, black, unspeakably violent and indifferent universe.

XX: You know, I have to say, even with a textbook right-wing mentality, your mother-in-law has beautifully shaped breasts.

BY: You know, you're a man of learning, of cultivation of aesthetic sensibility. This is what you take away from all the school-prayer hokum and “my country right or wrong”? Her bosom?

XX: It's not just her bosom. Her behind is also beautifully contoured.

[…]

XX: It's pear-shaped. Degas used to distinguish between an apple-shaped behind and pear-shaped. And I'm a big fruit eater.

BY: To mingle with all those sub-mentals on bicycles? It's like driving a car. Those hostile, belligerent morons all get driver's licenses. Of course, to have children, you don't need a license. No proof of anything. You need a license to fish. You need a license to be a barber. You need a license to sell hot dogs. You know, you read about these poor kids, beaten and starved, you wonder, why are these parents allowed to even have them?