Tao Lin

“People went up and down Sixth Avenue with the word motherfucker in their heads. They felt no emotions, had no sensation of…

— Tao Lin

Moose had no friends that year. A lot of the time a moose would feel tired and lean against other moose. Only…

— Tao Lin

I think Gmail chats are different than IRL conversations because Gmail chats are saved by Gmail exactly as they occurred. I like…

— Tao Lin

“The late-afternoon sky, in Paul's peripheral vision, panoramic and mostly unobstructed, appeared rural or suburban, more indicative of forests and fields and…

— Tao Lin

“Susie-Q," said Daniel with a smirk-like grin indicating both earnest disapproval and a kind of fondness toward Seroquel and its intense, often…

— Tao Lin

“and i don't think you should lie to me with any nature poems because you know you don't think sand is beautiful…

— Tao Lin

Life, people learned, was not easy. Life was not cake. Life was not a carrot cake.

— Tao Lin

“Yeah. I like Chopin. I feel like Chopin is ‘emo.’ Do you like Chopin?”

— Tao Lin

“Paul thought of how they'd kept delaying buying plane tickets to visit his parents in Taiwan - in December, which was next…

— Tao Lin

My first book was poetry, but I didn't write it first. I wrote it third. So my first two books were prose.

— Tao Lin

“When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards.…

— Tao Lin

If I wrote about "being [abstraction]" I would be ignoring existential issues (such as death, limited-time, the arbitrary nature of the universe,…

— Tao Lin

I know Bret Easton Ellis has said he has some amount of empathy for every character he has written about, though, so…

— Tao Lin

I'm not being secretive about anything. I just actually don't have opinions about society.

— Tao Lin

A world without right or wrong was a world that did not want itself, anything other than itself, or anything not those…

— Tao Lin

Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same.

— Tao Lin

I think I don't view myself as an author. I view myself as a person. I view anything as part of being…

— Tao Lin

While other rich people might be like, "Once I'm rich I'm going to go on a vacation to wherever," but instead they…

— Tao Lin

Matt would stare at Andrew for 10 minutes. It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then…

— Tao Lin

“Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and…

— Tao Lin

I think everyone is "racist," to differing degrees, in that everyone's brain will automatically associate information with other information, based on the…

— Tao Lin

I just keep investing in the future, and I haven't reached the point where I'm not doing that.

— Tao Lin

sad things are beautiful only from a distance therefore you just want to get away from them from a distance of one…

— Tao Lin

“It sometime occurred to him that for love to work, it had to be fair, that he should tell only half the…

— Tao Lin

I wouldn't think of my characters' moralities at all. And I think I identify fully with every main character I've written about…

— Tao Lin