We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.

• Christmas makes everything twice as sad.
• A bland smile is like a green light at an intersection, it feels good when you get one, but you forget it the moment you're past it.
• Technology favors horrible people.
• The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.
• There's much to be said for feeling numb. Time passes more quickly. You eat less, and because numbness encourages laziness, you do fewer things, good or bad, and the world's probably a better place for it.
• Christmas makes everything twice as sad.
• Everybody past a certain age, regardless of how they look on the outside, pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.
• The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.
• The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all.
• Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.