"Endurance is more important than truth because without endurance there can't be any truth. And truth means going to the end like you mean it. That way, death itself comes up short when it grabs."

"You women have more holes than swiss cheese."

"The ass is the face of the soul of sex."

"My objection to war was not that I had to kill somebody or be killed senselessly, that hardly mattered. What I objected to was to be denied the right to sit in a small room and starve and drink cheap wine and go crazy in my own way and at my own leisure."

"(The whole world is at the throat of the world, everybody feels angry, short-changed, cheated, everybody is despondent, disillusioned). I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness."

"And when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself. we ask for no mercy or no miracles; we are strong enough to live and to die and to kill flies, attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack, live on luck and skill, get alone, get alone often, and if you can't sleep alone be careful of the words you speak in your sleep; and ask for no mercy no miracles; and don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love failsand death is useless."

"Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great."

"Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part -a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was no gamble or humor in their game -it was corpse fucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience down through the centuries. Some morals tended to keep people slaves in factories, in churches and true to the State. Other morals simply made good sense. It was like a garden filled with poisoned fruit and good fruit. You had to know which to pick and eat, which to leave alone."

"When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great."

"You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time all else is grandiose romanticism or politics."

"I always felt it wouldpass.I listened to the charges against meknowing some of them to be truebut certainly notimportant enoughto become the target ofviolence, envy,vengeance.I thought it would surelypass."

"There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through."

"After dinner or lunch or whatever it was -- with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what -- I said, "Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us."

"That's what kills a man: lack of change."

"Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately ... good looking stuff; you're doing all right.""Sam," I say, "that's not true; I am one of God's most lonely men."

"To whom it may concern: please phone me for appointments when you want to see me. I will not answer unsolicited knocks upon the door. I need time to do my work. I will not allow you to murder my work. please understand that what keeps me alive will make me a better person toward and for you when we finally meet under easy and unstrained conditions."

"There's nothing todiscussthere's nothing torememberthere's nothing toforgetit's sadand it's notsadseems themost sensiblethinga person can doissitwith drink inhandas the wallswavetheir goodbyesmilesone comes throughit allwith a certain amount ofefficiency andbraverythenleavessome acceptthe possibility ofGodto help themgetthroughotherstake itstaight onand to theseI drink tonight."

"Hell was what you made it."

"The world is better withoutthem.only the plants and the animals aretrue comrades.I drink to them and withthem."

"Education was the new god, and educated men the new plantation masters."

"Crawled like a blind slug into the web."

"The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever."

"I do think that poetry is important though, if you don't strive at it, if you don't fill it full of stars and falseness."

"It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you."

"Isolation is a gift. Everything else is just a test of your endurance. You will be alone with the Gods. Your nights will flame with fire."

"I guess lesbianism wasn't so rampant in those days, they would've gotten a bunk with each other and just left me alone, you know. Which would have been just as well, you know.."

"Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust."

"I canalmost understandwhypeopleleapfrombridges."

"Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work."

"Since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light."

"All we do is sleep, and eat and lay around and make love. We're like slugs. Slug-love, I call it."

"Animals are inspirational. They don't know how to lie. They are natural forces."

"Nothing like beautiful legs. 'Cause with beautiful legs, even if you've been there only once or twice, there might be something up there besides the cunt, there might be something really marvellous this time - it could be a cunt, but it could be - it's just something about looking at the legs just makes you - I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the cunt, I'm just saying, you always imagine - some extra magic when you're looking at the outside portion of the female."