Houston is a cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby, sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.

Without gambling, I would not exist.

Those who fail to learn from the brutal stompings visited on them in the past are doomed to be brutally stomped in the future.

I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.

It was a maddening image and the only way to whip it was to hang on until dusk and banish the ghosts with rum.

Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception.