John Clellon Holmes... and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said 'You know John, this is really a beat generation'; and he leapt up and said, 'That's it, that's right!'

The beat generation (coined in Playboy)

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.

All of life is a foreign country.

If you own a rug you own too much.

..and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didnt know who I was

LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; NY gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.