I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.

You've got to rise from the floor alone or fall back alone.

I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, "crazy." But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there.

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.

Love is a form of prejudice. I have too many other prejudices.

They, all of them, seemed to put literary form in front of the actuality and living of life itself.

We are here to laugh at the odds.