I can't blame her. but wonder why she's here with me? where are the other guys? how can you be lucky? having someone the others have abandoned?

...in that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back.

I got lost somehow, began staring up her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck.

alone with everybody the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul, and the women break vases against the walls and them men drink too much and nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds. flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh. there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate. nobody ever finds the one. the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the madhouses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill nothing else fills.

It will rain all this night and we will sleep transfixed by the dark water as our blood runs through our fragile life.

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

great books are the ones we need