from the beginning, through the middle years and up to the end: too bad, too bad, too bad.

Few beautiful women were willing to indicate in public that they belonged to someone. I had known enough women to realize this. I accepted them for what they were and love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons. One simply became tired of holding back love and let it go because it needed some place to go. Then, usually, there was trouble.

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

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.

It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail.

The courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.

I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.