Besides the drugs and counterculture, I started talking about myself, which is the first thing you do when you are a writer.

An outsider longing to be on the inside is the same as the soloist longing to work in an ensemble. I get great satisfaction in being a part of the proper - for me - community. I'm uncomfortable with various social groupings and clusterings. But when I'm in the right group, doing the right thing, I get as much satisfaction out of that as anyone who does it all the time.

Whereas your blackness, ethnicity, homosexuality is something that might be genetic, I can't touch that, and I have no right.

People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.

I don't think drugs are a problem; I think they're a symptom. As long as Americans are empty, spiritually, emotionally, morally empty, they will need things like the drugs they choose to use. Mankind has wanted to change the way it felt from the beginning anyway. In this country there are even more reasons to want to feel different, to want to feel better, because this is such a neon sewer. This is such a degrading culture. It forces you to play Beethoven to your child in the uterus so that he will get into a better school and a better job and make more money so he can take care of you.

Every person you look at, you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking