There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.

It will rain all this night and we will sleep transfixed by the dark water as our blood runs through our fragile life.

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

The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy.

i am going to start selling air in dark orange bags marked: moon-blooms

purple does something strange to me

Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you.