The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.

The apartment was built at the edge of a high cliff so that when you looked out the back window it seemed as if you were twelve floors up instead of four. It was very much like living on the edge of the world - a last resting place before the final big drop.

I don't think I have written a poem when I was completely sober. But I have written a few good ones or a few bad ones under the hammer of a black hangover when I didn't know whether another drink or a blade would be the best thing.

There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.

... to die on a kitchen floor at 7 o'clock in the morning while other people are frying eggs is not so rough unless it happens to you.

Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line.

That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.