one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid

Hell, I'd even failed with women. Three wives. Nothing really wrong each time. It all got destroyed by petty bickering. Railing about nothing. Getting pissed-off over anything and everything. Day by day, year by year, grinding. Instead of helping each other you just sliced away, picked at this or that. Goading. Endless goading. It became a cheap contest. And once you got into it, it became habitual. You couldn't seem to get out. You almost didn't want to get out. And then you did get out. All the way.

life itself is not the miracle. that pain should be so constant, that's the miracle -

I've never met another man I'd rather be.

Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that.

don't be ashamed of anything; I guess God meant it all like locks on doors.

That's what friendship means: sharing the prejudice of experience.