All of us, at some point in life, choose our cliché.

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.

There's no deodorant for desperation.

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.

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

I used to say, for me, writing was like walking a high wire, and heroin made me forget there was no net. Which is a fancy way of saying dope made me forget how shitty I felt for being on dope.

I always tell myself, when I remember the non-stop self-generated hell party that used to be my life, I wouldn't be here if I didn't go there.