… after you're dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what's going to be your best memory of Earth? … What moment for you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet?.

All events became omens I lost the ability to take anything literally.Starved for affection, terrified of abandonment, I began to wonder if sex was really just an excuse to look deeply into another human being's eyes.And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile all sadnesses go unpitied.'

It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. 'You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you.Could the situation be that we no long believe in that particular place? Or maybe we were all promised heaven in our lifetimes, and what we ended up with can't help but suffer in comparison.' 'I wonder that all things seem to be from hell these days: dates, jobs, parties, weather.'Transience Is Now Permanence & the Fate of the Middle Classes (Doomed)', in The Edge Annual Question - 2010: How Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?, January 2010.I now wonder if God gets bored knowing the answer to everything. The Internet has made me very casual with a level of omniscience that was unthinkable a decade ago.

Player One by Douglas Coupland