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

That's the way it ends. The thin edge of the wedge.

One more drink and you're dead. This is no way to talk to a suicide head.

If I stop writing I am dead. And that's the only way I'll stop: dead.

It’s the order of things: each one gets a taste of honey then the knife.

Banion wondered which was worse - being sodomized by aliens, or having to sit through two hours of Charles Ives.

You can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it.