When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.

To me, nudity is a joke. I don't think nude people are very attractive at all. I like my women fully clothed. I like to imagine what might be under there. It might not be the standard thing. Imagine, stripping a woman down, and she has a body like a little submarine. With periscope, propellers, torpedoes. That would be the one for me. I'd marry her right off and be faithful to the end.

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.

whiskey makes the heart beat faster but it sure doesn't help the mind and isn't it funny how you can ache just from the deadly drone of existence?

If you can't write the next line, well, you're dead. The past doesn't matter.

I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a coffee cup in a park for old men playing chess or silly games of some sort.

I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time.