Life Interrupted: The Interrupted Monologue
by
Spalding Gray

Nicholas Dillon comes to visit me in his wheelchair, and he”s talking about how the TV”s have stolen the Irish storytelling. There just isn”t the same power of the storytelling because the people aren”t in the bars carrying on, they”re in the bars watching television. And they”re in the hospitals watching television. There”s no conversation. People looked at us very suspiciously, that we were over there talking while they watched Judge Judy, Ricki Lake and Survivor dubbed in Gaelic. p. 77

The brain can be a cruel organ. When it breaks, it breaks the Universe. John Perry Barlow p. 126

Stories seem to fly to me and stick. They are always out there, coming in. We exist in a fabric of personal stories. So I never wonder whether, if a tree falls in the forest, will anyone hear it. Rather, who will tell about it? p. 151

Spalding composed a life of digressions. For him, Where was I? was never a rhetorical question. Roger Rosenblatt p. 175

Everyone knows that Spalding wrote in English, but few people are aware that he meditated in three languages. He was fluent in the languages of Chance, Fate and Necessity. He knew how to read their signs, which led him to conclude that things do not happen for a reason. They just happen. On the surface it was a liberating insight, but the thought was disturbing to him in its implication that perhaps the moment is all there is, with no immortal afterlife or sequel to follow. Life is now, and if not, we are limited in our capacity to know otherwise. George Coates p. 205

I would ask him, Spalding, why do you keep placing yourself in situations that result in these endless cycles of regret and lament? To which he would respond, I am drawn to the study of extreme psychic states, which was his way of admitting to the fact that he found himself fascinating. George Coates. p. 206

He believed that getting lost in a familiar neighborhood was an undervalued pleasure to share with close friends from out of town. George Coates. p. 207