"From the beginning, through themiddle years and up to theend:too bad, too bad, too bad."

"Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste."

"Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live."

"It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun."

"Animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along."

"I think I need a drink.''Almost everybody does only they don't know it."

"Some people never go crazy. Me, sometimes I'll lie down behind the couch for 3 or 4 days. They'll find me there. It's Cherub, they'll say, and they pour wine down my throat rub my chest sprinkle me with oils. Then, I'll rise with a roar, rant, rage - curse them and the universe as I send them scattering over the lawn. I'll feel much better, sit down to toast and eggs, hum a little tune, Suddenly become as lovable as a pink overfed whale. Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

"I was alone with myself. And disgusting as I was it was better than being with somebody else, anybody else, all of them out there doing their pitiful little tricks and handsprings."

"I am too sick to lay downthe sidewalks frighten methe whole damned city frightens me,what I will becomewhat I have becomefrightens me."

"There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock."

"Good weatheris likegood women-it doesn't always happenand when it doesit doesn'talways last."

"As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry."

"I write poetry, worry, smile,laughsleepcontinue for a whilejust like most of usjust like all of us;sometimes I want to hug allMankind on earthand say,god damn all this that they've brought down on us,we are brave and goodeven though we are selfishand kill each other andkill ourselves,we are the peopleborn to kill and die and weep in dark roomsand love in dark rooms,and wait, andwait and wait and wait.we are the people.we are nothingmore."

"Jan was an excellent fuck...she had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her."

"Her violence frightened me. She always claimed that I was the jealous one, and I was often jealous, but when I saw things working against me I simply became disgusted and withdrew. Lydia was different. She reacted. She was the Head Cheerleader at the Game of Violence."

"The worst thing," he told me,"is bitterness, people end up sobitter."

"If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it's your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life."

"My mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!why don't you ever smile?"and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw."

"It does seemthe more we drinkthe better the wordsgo."

"Without literature, life is hell."

"All right, God, say that You are really there. You have put me in this fix. You want to test me. Suppose I test You? Suppose I say that You are not there? You've given me a supreme test with my parents and with these boils. I think that I have passed Your test. I am tougher than You. If You will come down here right now, I will spit into Your face, if You have a face. And do You shit? The priest never answered that question. He told us not to doubt. Doubt what? I think that You have been picking on me too much so I am asking You to come down here so I can put You to the test! I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I slept."

"I drive around the streetsan inch away from weeping,ashamed of my sentimentality andpossible love."

"I sat back down and poured a glass of wine. I left my door open. The moonlight came in with the sounds of the city: juke boxes, automobiles, curses, dogs barking, radios . . . We were all in it together. We were all in one big shit pot together. There was no escape. We were all going to be flushed away."

"I like to prowl ordinary places.I feel sorry for us all or glad for us allcaught alive togetherand awkward in that way.there's nothing better than the jokeof usthe seriousness of usthe dullness of us."

"Don't ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out."

"To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can't sit still, move, or even go decently insane."

"Great writers are indecent peoplethey live unfairlysaving the best part for paper.good human beings save the worldso that bastards like me can keep creating art,become immortal.if you read this after I am deadit means I made it."

"I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulder blades, only I seldom had bread."

"I guess I m too used to sitting in a small room and making words do a few things. I see enough of humanity at the racetracks, the supermarkets, gas stations, freeways, cafes, etc. This can t be helped. But I feel like kicking myself in the ass when I go to gatherings, even if the drinks are free. It never works for me. I ve got enough clay to play with. People empty me. I have to get away to refill. I m what s best for me, sitting here slouched, smoking a beedie and watching this creen flash the words. Seldom do you meet a rare or interesting person. It s more than galling, it s a fucking constant shock. It s making a god-damned grouch out of me. Anybody can be a god-damned grouch and most are. Help!"

"Humanity, you never had it to begin with."

"Ya got cigarettes? she asks. "Yes, I say,"I got cigarettes. "Matches? she asks."Enough to burn Rome. "Whiskey?"Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River of pain. "You drunk? "Not yet."

"I'm not a guru. I wish you wouldn't pose these things at me, man. Ask me about women or something."

"When I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns."

"There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here, "good". I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes, it gives you hope."

"First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library."

"Nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing."

"There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken with fear. They fear failure so much that they fail."

"There is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy."

"Music is much like fucking, but some composers can't climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent."

"Yes Yeswhen God created love he didn't help most when God created dogs He didn't help dogs when God created plants that was average when God created hate we had a standard utility when God created me He created me when God created the monkey He was asleep when He created the giraffe He was drunk when He created narcotics He was high and when He created suicide He was low when He created you lying in bed He knew what He was doing He was drunk and He was high and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time He made some mistakes but when He created you lying in bed He came all over His Blessed Universe."

"Of one hundred movies there's one that is fair, one that's good and ninety eight that are very bad. most movies start badly and steadily get worse."

"Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence."

"My beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world."

"People need me. I fillthem. if they can't see mefor awhile the get desperate, they getsick.but if I see them too oftenI get sick. it's hard to feedwithout getting fed."

"I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again."

"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."

"Few beautiful women were willing to indicate in public that they belonged to someone. I had known enough women to realize this. I accepted them for what they were and love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons. One simply became tired of holding back love and let it go because it needed some place to go. Then, usually, there was trouble."

"What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper."

"We're all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing."

"Dying should come easy:like a freight train youdon't hear whenyour back isturned."