And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us.

Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn.

my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, 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 the saddest smile I ever saw

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.

As we go on with our lives we tend to forget that the jails and the hospitals and the madhouses and the graveyards are packed.

All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.