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

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.

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.

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

Let’s just say that back in the old days, sex was available every two feet. But I never made love to anybody that did not want me to.

When I’m in power, here’s how I’m gonna put the country back on its feet. I’m going to put sterilizing agents in the following products: Sunny Delight, Mountain Dew, and Thick-Crust Pizza. Only the ‘tardiest of the ‘tards like the thick crust.

Everything seems overwhelming when you stand back and look at the totality of it. I build a lot of stuff and it would all seem impossible if I didn’t break it down piece by piece, stage by stage.

As good as you’ve been to this world is as good as it’s gonna be right back to you.

I’m not here to perform. I’m here to sign autographs. You have to wait till I come back with my own hand.

If I hold back, I’m no good. I’m no good. I’d rather be good sometimes, than holding back all the time.

I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.

That’s the funny thing about America–the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others.