Allen [ Ginsberg] was a particular friend, one of my heroes, really. I knew him almost as long as I've been writing.

Words are such a poor medium when you really want someone to feel something.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.

...the crazy never die.

Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective. So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle everyday? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything anther than galloping neurosis?

I noticed at once that Depp had a dangerously energized intelligence . . . He was a suave little brute, but he had a wicked sense of humor and a rare instinct for escalation.

It never got weird enough for me.