there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late

my greatest problem was stamps, envelopes, paper and wine, with the world on the edge of World War II.

Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.

I will remember the kisses, our lips raw with love, and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me.

2 p.m. beer nothing matters but flopping on a mattress with cheap dreams and a beer as the leaves die and the horses die and the landladies stare in the halls; brisk the music of pulled shades, a last man's cave in an eternity of swarm and explosion; nothing but the dripping sink, the empty bottle, euphoria, youth fenced in, stabbed and shaven, taught words propped up to die.

But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

It’s never quite right, all the things we are taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we die, all the lives we live.