You don't go on "probably" when love and guns are in hand.

the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.

I had no feeling for the things so many others needed.

I have gotten so used to melancholia that I greet it like an old friend.

When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.

I am for the small man who has not forgotten, for the man who loves his beer and his women and his sunlight