Dying should come easy: like a freight train you don't hear when your back is turned.

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.

Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer.

your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn't help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over the river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you.

Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.

As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry.