Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible and nothing can change that; neither new girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or God.

When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.

News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.

I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?

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

I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right…. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me.

There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and all that...but I'm not the book, see? I'm the guy who wrote it, but I don't want them to come up and throw roses on me or anything. I want them to let me breathe.