We must.. We must bring our own light to the darkness

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.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.

And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.

Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

my youth, one time, that time I knew even through the nothingness, it was a celebration of something not to do but only know.