Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.

The Laughing Heart your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.

I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.

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.

I didn't feel that way about it. I had been playing with death for some time. I can't say we were the best of friends but we were well acquainted.

I held her wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred, centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted. there was no creature living as foul as I and all my poems were false.