great books are the ones we need

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.

in the cupboard sits my bottle like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers. I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony, sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere, the phone rings gamboling its sound against the odds of the crooked sea; I drink deeply and evenly now, I drink to paradise and death and the lie of love.

What good are you? What can you do? It has cost me a thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you! Suppose I left you here on the street? Then what would you do?" "Catch butterflies

I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread.

Fiction is an improvement on life