my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom.

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

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 were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.

It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.

Anybody doesn't like these pitchers don't like potry, see? Anybody don't like potry go home see television shots of big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses. Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes.

I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.