your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn't help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over the river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you.

They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.

places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you notice that?

The night kept coming on in and there was nothing I could do.

You can steal my women but don't play with my whiskey.

It’s the order of things: each one gets a taste of honey then the knife.

writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.