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.

Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation.

The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.

If you let them kill you, they will

I take much pleasure in being alone but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.

I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together.

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.