40 Quotes by Sam Lipsyte

Why do you think posers pose? Because they want to be invited to the dominion of the real. And they know their very desire for it disqualifies them.

I'm finding that the older I get, it's not that I learn new things, it's more like I find out how much of what I know is common knowledge.

Is this what Principal Fontana meant by the phrase 'well-rounded'?It’s fucking spherical, Catamounts.

We are going to eat ice cream and we are going to eat shit. The trick is to use different spoons.

They weren’t like dolls, because dolls had no feelings. Kids had feelings, just not any remotely related to yours.

You pay a whore to make you feel like a man, you fund a philharmonic to make yourself feel like a refined man.

I felt as though I were snorting cocaine, or rappelling down a cliffside, or cliffsurfing off a cliff of pure cocaine.

You’re growing up. All you need to remember is that nothing changes. New technology, new markets, global interconnectivity, doesn’t matter. It’s still the rulers and the ruled. The fleecers and the fleeced.” “Which are you?” “I’m a piece of expensive equipment. You, too. Maybe not so expensive. [...]

Yes,” said Cooley. “That is the question, as the Bard might say.” “The Bard?” “What’s so funny?” said Cooley. “Nothing, sir,” I said. “I just didn’t know people still used that term.” “Well, I’m a people, Burke. Am I not?” “Of course.” “If you prick me, do I not bleed, you scat-gobbling, mother-rimming prick?” Occasionally Dean Cooley reverted to a vocabulary more suited to his marine years, but some maintained it was only when he felt threatened, or stretched for time. “Yes, sir,” I said.