It's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies

all day long wearing a hat that wasn't on my head

Never dreaming, was I, poor Jack Duluoz, that the soul is dead. That from Heaven grace descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail to tell me; no example inside my first and only skin. That love is the heritage, and cousin to death. That the only love can only be the first love, the only death the last, the only life within, and the only word . . . choked forever.

Who doesn't feel studious when he doesn't have a girl with a Riviera suntan?

Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop.

As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind.

So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.