Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety - leaning into it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world.

Life is life, and kind is kind

I looked up at the dark sky and prayed to God for a better break in life and a better chance to do something for the little people I loved.

They spent all week saving pennies and went out Saturdays to spend fifty bucks in three hours.

I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.

At night I closed my eyes and saw my bones threading the mud of my grave.

After all, a homeless man has reason to cry, everything in the world is pointed against him.