“I am a serial monogamist of sorts, and have been with my girlfriend for almost four years.”

About twenty pages into Luke B. Goebel’s Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, I realized I was reading with one hand holding my forehead and one balled at my waist, kind of clenched, and gazing down into the paper like a man soon to be converged upon.

If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable… we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.

When I was a kid my primary goal in life was to find a book that was alive. Not alive in the human sense, but like a thing that would send me to a place not otherwise accessible on Earth.

I’ve actually started to think that it’s a purer state for people. Because he operates as if he’s a child and everything is new, which seems more honest.

It is important not to show too many inches at once.

And so language for me doesn’t reflect the world, it extends the world, so that it becomes larger and more fantastic and less mired in this school shooting bullshit. It actually builds a future – that’s how evolution occurs.

I like smartasses, because I can be smartass back and rashy.

The things that language stands for do not require humans, and in fact are often trampled down by humans.

I logically don’t believe that all this stuff [surrounding us] is generated from dust. But I’m also not like “Jesus Christ came down to save us.” It’s almost selfish to think that human beings, on this plane of reality, are the end of it.

What if life after death is all based within memory: you die, and you don’t ascend on a bed of clouds to Jesus, but your brain has a terrain that it can use to propel itself further.

In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning.

You know, I was at CBS News for 28 years. I may have run an unidentified source. Frankly, I don’t remember.

Young Alexander conquered India. He alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Philip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who Triumphed with him?

You don’t see me in Los Angeles a lot. I go back home. Because I can’t play the game. I can’t – my tolerance – I know I’m getting old; I’ll be 50 this year. And you know how I know I’m getting old? ‘Cause my tolerance level is low.

The path that was entered upon only one hundred and fifty years ago … How young she is! It will be centuries before she will adopt that maturity of custom – the clothing of the grave – that some people believe she is already fitted for.

I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.

I’ve been back in New York a year and a half now. Before that I was on the West Coast for five years.

Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.