If I'm an ass, I should say so. If I don't, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them.

I am ashamed to be a member of the human race but I don't want to add any more to that shame, I want to scrape a little of it off.

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

the writing of some men is like a vast bridge that carries you over the many things that claw and tear. The Wine of Forever

i was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead.

The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.

There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here... "good." I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness" like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes... it gives you hope.