if you think they didn't go crazy in tiny rooms just like you're doing now without women without food without hope then you're not ready.

I guess for me Hemingway is a lot like it is for others: he goes down well when we are young.

Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.

Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.

I like women who haven’t lived with too many men. I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer women who haven’t been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. You’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.

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.

An early taste of death is not necessarily a bad thing.