Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately ... good looking stuff; you're doing all right." "Sam," I say, "that's not true; I am one of God's most lonely men.

As we live we all get caught and torn by various traps. Nobody escapes them. Some even live with them. The idea is to realize that a trap is a trap. If you are in one and you don't realize it, then you're finished.

I don't carry notebooks and I don't consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I am pretty good at doing that. I don't like writers, but then I don't like insurance salesmen either.

I didn't like parties.I didn't know how to dance and people frightened me, especially people at parties. They attempted to be sexy and gay and witty and although they hoped they were good at it, they weren 't. They were bad at it. Their trying so hard only made it worse.

Complaint is often the result of an insufficient ability to live within the obvious restrictions of this god damned cage.

Some of my poems indicate that I am writing while living alone after a split with a woman, and I've had many splits with women. I need solitude more often when I'm not writing than when I am.

They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.