64+ Tao Lin Quotes On Friendship, Introspective And Absurdist

Tao Lin is an American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his works Taipei and Richard Yates, which were both published in 2013. His writing style is characterized by its dry, deadpan humor and its focus on topics such as depression, relationships, and consumerism. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Tao Lin on life, love, friendship.

Top 10 Tao Lin Quotes

1. Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same.
2. Sometimes an alien would stand with a moose, not because of solidarity, but because of accidentally doing it.
3. note the similarities with buddhism a buddhist who has achieved nirvana is not sad primarily because it does not know the concept of sad [...]
4. Life, people learned, was not easy. Life was not cake. Life was not a carrot cake.
5. does a society exist where it's become acceptable to wear 'helmets' enclosing one's entire head when in public to preempt social interaction
6. Matt would stare at Andrew for 10 minutes. It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat.
7. I just keep investing in the future, and I haven't reached the point where I'm not doing that.
8. I was delivering pizzas at Domino's. I was 17 maybe. I liked it a lot. Just driving in the nice weather and listening to music.
9. Regarding drugs: just the existence of drugs seems troubling to me.
10. I think Bret Easton Ellis has said that he doesn't completely identify with his characters. And I think he has referred to them as immoral before.

Tao Lin Short Quotes

• I just don't feel good if I'm repeating myself.
• We have been sitting here all night bullshitting and we still don’t know what to do.
• I think mostly the commodifying comes after I've done something that has some other value to me.
• I cried when my ex-girlfriend sent me a text message saying how much she liked my present to her.
• It seems like for the last 10 years, I've just been investing in the future.
• I can feel the universe expanding and making things be further apart.
• But there was nothing I could do with the emotion really. It just went away after a while.
• The correct arrangement of words will make these bad feelings go away tonight.

Tao Lin Quotes About Life

Life has never died, which is something that I think people ignore. — Tao Lin

It seems like most people will agree that they would like if they were treated by other people based on what they have concretely done in their life, not what other people have done, with their lives. — Tao Lin

Lately, they were always reassuring each other that nothing was wrong; and probably it was true—life wasn’t supposed to be incredible, after all. Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some went straight to video. — Tao Lin

Tao Lin Famous Quotes And Sayings

As a child, she’d always had what she imagined were fascinating thoughts, but didn’t ever say them. Once, as a little girl, at recess, she thought that if she ran very fast at a pole and then caught it and swung quickly around, part of her would keep going, and she would become two girls. — Tao Lin

My publisher had mailed [Bret Easton Ellis] Richard Yates. And when I talked to him he said he had read all my prose books. And he said something like, "You got a lot of mileage out of Dakota Fanning." — Tao Lin

Novels–and memoirs–are perhaps the most comprehensive reports humans can deliver, of their private experiences, to other humans. In these terms there is only one kind of novel: a human attempt to transfer or convey some part or version of their world of noumenon to another’s world of noumenon. — Tao Lin

sad things are beautiful only from a distance therefore you just want to get away from them from a distance of one hundred and thirty years ....i'm going to distance myself until the world is beautiful — Tao Lin

I don't feel a connection with younger people or with Generation X, or any generation, I feel. If I felt a connection with people my age I wouldn't have written six books about feeling depressed, alienated, lonely. If I did I would have many friends and feel connected with them and probably be a happy person who has a real job. — 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, the mystery of consciousness) that I feel affect me most in my life and think about most of the time. Another reason is that it doesn't seem specific or accurate, to me, to write about "being [abstraction]." I think there are some other reasons. — Tao Lin

It seems like I'm not [happy]. Because if you look at my tweets and what I think and say, it seems like I'm worried about what's going to happen. — Tao Lin

I like reading books where people with a lot of money use it to do whatever they want. Like stay in expensive hotels and do whatever drugs they want and fly wherever they want. — 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 information they are looking at, but I think focusing on race in any manner that isn't neutral or self-aware probably increases racism. — Tao Lin

If a context and a goal is defined I could say if it's good or bad. But overall I don't view things as good or bad. So I'm like a robot or computer in that sense. So maybe that's why people don't think they know me when they read my writing. — Tao Lin

I don't think it's more positive to have a Twitter account, a Tumblr, and a blog. Someone without those things will use their time to do other things, like read books or swim or talk to their children or read websites or listen to music or write books or lie in bed or sit in a chair. I don't think any of these things are more positive than any other things. I don't think having an internet presence helps financially. — Tao Lin

Moose had no friends that year. A lot of the time a moose would feel tired and lean against other moose. Only there wouldn't be moose there and the moose would fall. — Tao Lin

I know Bret Easton Ellis has said he has some amount of empathy for every character he has written about, though, so maybe I am similar to him in terms of that. I'm not sure what he thinks exactly. — Tao Lin

When I'm talking to someone I think 'can I use this dialogue in a book,'" said Luis. "If the answer is no I try talking to someone else. — Tao Lin

Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared ? — Tao Lin

Death is the end of the fear of death. [...] To avoid it we must not stop fearing it and so life is fear. Death is time because time allows us to move toward death which we fear at all times when alive. We move around and that is fear. Movement through space requires time. Without death there is no movement through space and no life and no fear. To be aware of death is to be alive is to fear is to move around in space and time toward death. — Tao Lin

It sometimes seemed to him that for love to work, it had to be fair, that he should tell only half the joke, and she the other half. Otherwise, it would not be love, but something completely else–pity or entertainment, or stand-up comedy. — Tao Lin

I usually have Kafka biography in my bathroom. It's a book I can open at random and feel interested in immediately. It's really funny. With this book, since I'm opening it at random and immediately interested, I don't feel the need to read more than I want to read, in that there's not, like, a plot that leads me along. So I can stop whenever. — 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 a person, so I feel okay with "marketing" or other things like that. — Tao Lin

Though if love was an animal, Garret knew, it would probably be the Loch Ness Monster. If it didn’t exist, that didn’t matter. People made models of it, put it in the water, and took photos. The hoax of it was good enough. The idea of it. Though some people feared it, wished it would just go away, had their lives insured against being eaten alive by it. — Tao Lin

You were one person alive and your brain was encased in a skull. There were other people out there. It took effort to be connected. — Tao Lin

If I focused hard on getting a literary agent, and doing things like that, instead of designing my blog's header, I would have more money, I think. I think I don't view myself as an author. I view myself as a person. I view [anything] as part of being a person, so I feel okay with "marketing" or other things like that. — Tao Lin

I like Bret Easton Ellis' sense of humor. I feel like mine is sometimes similar to his. And how his characters sometimes seem really confused in a humorous manner. I like that. And I have that sometimes in my characters. — Tao Lin

I feel connected with people because of their sense of humor, worldview, and what they think and feel about certain existential issues (things not affected, in my view, by if someone rides a horse or drives a car or talks only IRL or only by typing), not how old they are, what they use to convey what they think and feel about certain existential issues, or if we have both watched the same TV shows or looked at the same websites. — Tao Lin

If you're, like, a PhD student in English, and you look at each instance that Richard Yates is mentioned in the book...it has sort of it's own narrative that one could analyze and write literary criticism about. — Tao Lin

loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shape of a helicopter the same size as the helicopter and that's it's only skill and it isn't good enough but it's still amazing. — Tao Lin

Rejection is good. Putting others ahead of self, giving things away. Success, money, power, fame, happiness, friends; any kind of pleasure - giving it all away, in the pyramid scheme of life, with the knowledge that everything will be returned, and being satisfied with that knowledge; not with the actual return of things, but the idea of the return of things. There is death. — Tao Lin

I'm a shy, nervous person, and I don't like teaching with "terms." I didn't teach them, like, "This is first person, this is second person, this is foreshadowing," or whatever, so no one probably felt like they were learning anything. But I feel like teaching in that way reduces the concept to a term. — Tao Lin

I don't know what to say about Asians. I think everyone is "racist," to differing degrees, in that everyone's brain will automatically associate information with other information, based on the information they are looking at (for example skin color, bone structure), but I think focusing on race in any manner that isn't neutral or self-aware probably increases racism. — Tao Lin

I actually don't have...opinions. I'm not being secretive about anything. I just actually don't have opinions about society. I can discern that certain things have an effect on certain other things but I don't view those effects as good or bad. — Tao Lin

Focusing on being a person instead of an Asian or an [anything] seems to promote a worldview that encourages people to treat others based on what each person has specifically done in their life, which seems like it would reduce such things as war, racism, unfairness, "hate crimes," [other things most people feel aversion toward]. — Tao Lin

The distracting feeling of disbelief when you're finally doing something you've procrastinated on for notable amounts of time. — 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 and would say that I am them pretty much. So in terms of that I don't think I'm similar to Bret Easton Ellis . — Tao Lin

If I don't like someone and I start reading their stuff, it seems like my brain will just automatically start criticizing everything that's there. It's really hard to read a book without having all this outside information telling you what to think about it. — Tao Lin

I think Gmail chats are different than IRL conversations because Gmail chats are saved by Gmail exactly as they occurred. I like texts and emails. Seems like I don't have anything to say that isn't obvious about texts, emails, and Gmail chats. — Tao Lin

One seemed simply to be here, less an accumulation of moments than a single arrangement continuously gifted from some inaccessible future. — Tao Lin

On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in. — Tao Lin

I don't know what Douglas Coupland thinks about his writing. I've read maybe one page of one of his books and didn't think I was similar to him. But it seems like people just compare you to anyone, pretty much. — 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 just keep wanting to be more rich. It just seems like it would be fun to do whatever you wanted. If I were really rich I would be flying places, I think. — Tao Lin

I don't think anything ever "needs" to happen. I don't think it's more positive to have a Twitter account, a Tumblr, and a blog. Someone without those things will use their time to do other things, like read books or swim or talk to their children or read websites or listen to music or write books or lie in bed or sit in a chair. I don't think any of these things are more positive than any other things. — Tao Lin

I don't know how to incorporate regret. But I'll say, like, "It affected me that way," "I learned this," "Next time maybe I'll do it differently". — Tao Lin

There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at. — Tao Lin

I know,' said Erin, and described how she'd lately felt depressed in a new and scary way, which Paul also had felt lately and described as a sadness-based fear, immune to tone and interpretation, as if not meant for humans - more visceral than sadness, but unlike fear because it decreased heart rate and impaired the senses, causing everything to seem 'darker. — Tao Lin

Life Lessons by Tao Lin

1. Tao Lin's work emphasizes the importance of being honest and authentic in life, even if it means facing difficult truths.
2. His writing also encourages readers to be mindful of their own mental health and to prioritize self-care.
3. Lastly, Tao Lin's work demonstrates the power of creativity and self-expression as a means of exploring and understanding the world.