Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3) QUOTES

1 " People looked at him as an orange-faced evil clown with silly hair. Like the Joker in Batman comics. Make Gotham great again! "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

2 " Astrology is superstition. A remnant of the ignorant dark ages, when people knew nothing about how the world works.

They believed the earth is flat and the center of the universe. Astrology might have made sense a long time ago, when people didn't know any better. Back then people believed that the stars were gods, with names like Zeus or Mars, the God of war, who had nothing better to do than to watch us down here on earth, and fuck with us. And gods have superpowers. So it would make sense for gods to be able to influence our lives or our decisions. Back then it sounded like there was an internal logic to it all.

But nowadays we know better. Now we know that the earth is not flat and not the center of the universe. And now we know that the stars are not gods with superpowers, but simply suns and planets, millions of miles away. Big balls of gas and rock, flying through space, minding their own business. Mars is not the God of War. Mars is just a big red rock. There is simply no mechanism by which a big rock, flying through space millions of miles away, is gonna affect whether you're gonna get a raise tomorrow or not.

Think about how self-centered and narcissistic that idea actually is. Astrology is the idea that this endlessly big universe and all the trillions of planets in it, are only here to affect whether you are gonna have a good day tomorrow. Because all these big rocks flying through space millions of miles away have nothing better to do than worry about you. Because you're so special, and everything is about you.

The idea behind astrology is so stupid, it's actually kinda funny. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

3 " The problem with Trump voters is, they're so dumb, they don't even know how much stuff they don't know. They just assume nobody else knows more about evolution or global warming than they do. If they don't understand how it works, they think nobody understands how it works. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

4 " It's so exhausting, so mentally and emotionally draining when you care about a drug addict and they never miss an opportunity to disappoint, manipulate or hurt you. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

5 " You're confusing weather with climate. When it's cold in the winter, that's weather. When it's cold in Alaska, that's climate. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

6 " First you make people believe they have a problem, and then you sell them the solution. That's how advertising works. Every snake oil salesman knows that. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

7 " I liked the ending of The Sopranos. The screen suddenly went black. In the middle of a scene. Without any of the plotlines being resolved. That's what real life is like. Everything keeps going, until someone turns off the lights and you're dead. And even then the story continues, without you. There is no such thing as a happy ending. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

8 " I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

9 " So they tell you to buy stuff. More and more and more stuff. Even if you don't need any more stuff, buy more stuff! Because capitalism is like a pyramid scheme. It must constantly grow, constantly shovel more money to the top, like a sand monster feeding itself sand, or it dies. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

10 " A sacred cow, unexamined, feeds itself and produces a whole lot of bullshit. And nobody wants that, except the people who profit by selling you bullshit. Those are the people who try to tell you that examining or criticizing the sacred cow is taboo. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

11 " I like old hippies so much more than old conservatives. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

12 " If everything Fox News says about liberals were actually true, I'd hate liberals too. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

13 " There's a big overlap between conspiracy theorists, racists, gun nuts, doomsday preppers, fans of the rapture and poor white Republicans. They all have one thing in common: They feel like the oppressed underdogs. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

14 " Sometimes conspiracy theories are true. Most of the time they're not. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

15 " Would three boobs be better than two? "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

16 " Creativity takes courage. It takes courage to bare your soul for the world. It's like taking off your armor, although you know people have pointy sticks that they love to jab into soft flesh. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

17 " Nowadays words like "Liberal" and "Muslim" are used by right-wing extremists in the same way as the word "Jew" was used by the right-wing extremists of Nazi Germany. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

18 " Our entire life we chase the wrong things because we think having more money and buying more stuff will make us more happy. But it doesn't. You know why a billionaire has 100 Ferraris? Because 99 weren't enough. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

19 " America is like an isolated information island. A lot of what happens in the rest of the world, a lot of the cultural exchange, never makes it to rural Alabama. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)

20 " Americans like to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, to impress people they don't like. And then they wonder why they're not happy. "

― , Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3)