I just want a hot cup of coffee,black,and I don’t want to hear about your troubles.

I don’t understand people, never will. It looks like I got to travel pretty much alone.

Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.

Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.

That's how it is with books, isn't it: They're not in a hurry. They'll wait for you till you're ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill.

I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.