Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it's that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through-originality.

I'd sleep and forget it; I had my own life, my own sad and ragged life forever.

I can't think of anybody...who knows the sum and substance of what I know and feel and cry about in my secret self all the time when I don't feel strong, the sorrows of time and personality, and can therefore on all levels make it all the way with me

Never mistake talking about writing for actual writing.

It was all completely serious, all completely hallucinated, all completely happy.

I'd rather hop freights around the country and cook my food out of tin cans over wood fires, than be rich and have a home or work.

He seems to me to be headed for his ideal fate, which is compulsive psychosis dashed with a jigger of psychopathic irresponsibility and violence