What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

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

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.

Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them: like you they have not escaped.

I still have a little whiskey left and therefore a chance.

It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.

He asked, "what makes a man a writer?" "well," I said, "it's simple, it's either you get it down on paper or you jump off a bridge. writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers." "are you desperate?" "I don't know.