Neil McLachlan has presented television programs, worked as a theater usher, done a bit of stand-up comedy, and went slightly mad in a telesales job. He suffers from insomnia and says of his aphorisms: “a good deal of them (too many for comfort) [are] concerned with despair and disillusionment in one way or another.” Which puts me in mind of E.M. Cioran, another aphorist who suffered from insomnia, loved to hang out in cemeteries, and had a rather bleak take on life, the universe, and everything. Still, McLachlan is a lot more upbeat than Cioran, even if you have to dig a little bit to find the faint glimmers of light.

False hope is still a form of hope and will therefore always be preferable to true despair.

Seems profoundly unfair to insist on faith when faith is precisely what those most in need of salvation find impossible.

Youth is a promise betrayed by age.

A definition of work: doing something that doesn’t interest you in the company of people you don’t care for at the behest of someone you neither like nor respect.

Nowhere quite so calming as a cemetery, that lovely memorial to the pointless vulgarity of human life and the cosmic anomaly that is consciousness.

Nothing of value is achieved by an exertion of the will.