Everything was a trap: women, drugs, whiskey, wine, scotch, beer - even beer - cigars, and cigarettes. Traps: Work or no work. Traps: Artistry or no artistry; everything sucked you into some spiderweb. I disdained the use of the needle for the same reason that I disdained some so-called beautiful women - the price was far beyond the measure of the worth. I didn't want to hustle that hard.

First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.

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.

Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It's just a little while, and then it burns away... Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.

It's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse... no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies... not the death of his love but the shoelace that snaps with no time left.

People do too much. They say too much.

I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.