places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you notice that?

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus!

Long before I became 'rich and famous' I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls.

there was something about that city, though it didn't let me feel guilty that I had no feeling for the things so many others needed. it let me alone. sitting up in my bed the lights out, hearing the outside sounds, lifting my cheap bottle of wine, letting the warmth of the grape enter me as I heard the rats moving about the room, I preferred them to humans. being lost, being crazy maybe is not so bad if you can be that way undisturbed. New Orleans gave me that. nobody ever called my name.

Thanksgiving. It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don't forget indigestion. I wasn't different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me.

The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder.

The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.