You need an entire drama to construct your life around to avoid living it.

The second time I took acid, I watched myself in the mirror for nine hours. What I realized, when I stared, was that my face looked exactly the same when I cried as when I laughed. After awhile I couldn't tell which I was doing. Relief was just pain inside out.

If you're an asshole, you have an excuse for being an asshole because you're a junkie. But then once you give up the drugs, and you're still an asshole, that's problematic.

Jake La Botz is a creator of dark poetry and haunting song, the kind of music that gets in your bones and rides you for days, a sound and vision only those who've been to the bottom and clawed their way back up can generate. His midnight gifts evoke Hank Williams and Skip James as much as Tom Waits and Dylan. Not everybody will get this music - because not everybody is ready for the truth.

This is what I think: If you had the nerve to live what you lived, you should have the nerve to write it.

It's not like I was an alkie or anything. Alcohol is for cleaning needles

How do you write when you're not miserable? The solution, of course, is to make yourself miserable about not writing.