## Metadata - Author: [[archive.is]] - Full Title:: Bob Odenkirk Would Like to Remind You That Life Is a Meaningless Farce - The New York Times - Category:: #🗞️Articles - URL:: https://archive.is/zPqra - Read date:: [[2026-04-27]] ## Highlights > **?** Yeah, so almost four years ago, I had this heart incident. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq733rz0p87736ppqemsffsv)) > How did that affect you? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq733v1f5dkbz7jqy8rg7d3m)) > “[On the Calculation of Volume](https://archive.is/o/zPqra/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/magazine/solvej-balle-calculation-of-volume.html),” and the character in this book is having a very unique experience of time. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq7345cqmxmwqsecbtmnn97v)) > “I had a day to go and I went with it. There was no plan. There was an outline, one which I could follow, floating, gently. There was no goal, no prey to be caught. I was not a circling raptor, a vulture, a shark, a big cat poised to spring. I was not on my guard. This was something else. I was on a journey. On my way home, I thought. I was traveling on an open ticket, with no itinerary. I journeyed through the minutiae of the streets in a universe replete with minor incidents, a host of objects and occurrences and sensations all crowded together in my memory.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq734cet7xzd680c4nszr9w4)) > And I knew it would go away, too. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq734gkajpgmcps1ae8s12wf)) > the best chapter of my life is behind me, that’s kind of sad. But what can I say? That’s how I feel. There is not a freaking thing I can do that is going to match the value that I felt of being a parent of kids between 0 and around 14, 15. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq7381yhn5z8yt63193714tv)) > **But what gives your life purpose now?** Trying to find the next thing to do that will give it purpose? [Laughs] ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq73wxjs0kdn9asnam5df1xy)) > **sketch comedy tends to be a younger person’s game. You’re 63 now. Is your relation to sketch comedy different than it used to be?** I still have an instinct for it. But I do feel what I’ve said is true, that doing sketch comedy when you get older is a little strange. > **Why?** A young person’s energy is right for it. It fits. When you get older, it’s like: What are you doing? Why are you being so silly? It loses something. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq7401zz2dhkexwgx2zw8ne0)) The complete text is: Maybe this is related: Near the end of your memoir, you write that show business is not curing cancer and that it’s a distraction, “which is inarguably key to life on earth because life on earth is so bleak and painful and the only and best response to that is to LOOK AWAY > **Maybe this is related: Near the end of your** **[memoir](https://archive.is/o/zPqra/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/books/new-nonfiction-books-spring-2022.html)**Yeah. [Long pause] You want me to repudiate that statement? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq743j85amnzhme47mxz28gc)) > I have no unified field theory of myself. As you can see from my career, I go in a lot of directions and I don’t have a very solid justification for the whole thing. The only thing I can say is there’s a great risk that I am willing to take because I don’t think much of myself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq7465y4yyeh7aj10rn6p940)) > **I know middle age may be a time of resignation or acceptance. But is there anything in your life or work now that makes you think,** ***This is great*****? Or is it just managed decline?** God, I’m sorry to be a bummer. > **It’s real.** If you want to hear something positive, here’s my positive. > **Hit me.** In the face of what I consider the limitations of being a person, which are strict and seem immutable, we’ve got to keep trying. I don’t know what the future is if we don’t hope to be better than we are right now. So yeah, I do have some wind beneath my wings. Just a draft. There’s a breeze beneath my wings. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kq74ecnyd8htvyp49vv65s6w))