when I was a boy I used to dream of becoming the village idiot. I used to lie in bed and imagine myself the happy idiot able to get food easily ...and easy sympathy, a planned confusion of not too much love or effort. some would claim that I have succeeded.

the best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them

It’s hard to drink when you dance. And it’s hard to dance when you drink.

I got lost somehow, began staring up her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck.

I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax.

I have been treated better than I should have been---not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women.

I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.