Some of my most neurotically fierce bitterness is the result of realizing how untrue people have become.

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.

If you own a rug you own too much.

I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

The truth of the matter is, you die, all you do is die, and yet you live, yes you live, and that's no Harvard lie.

I'm stuck struggling in the cold water, and all I can do is grieve, grieve, in the hoar necessitous horror of the morning, bitterly I hate myself, bitterly it's too late yet while I feel better I still feel ephemeral and unreal and unable to straighten my thoughts or even really grieve, in fact I feel too stupid to be really bitter, in short I don't know what I'm doing and I'm being told what to do.

But there's no joy at all, people say "Oh well he's drunk and happy let him sleep it off"--The poor drunkard is *crying*--He's crying for his mother and father and great brother and great friend, he's crying for help. (p.111)