I'll never stop caring. But the thing about caring is, it's inconvenient. Sometimes you've got to give when it makes no sense to at all. Sometimes you've got to give until it hurts.

My neediness is not a hole to be filled but something beneath the skin scratching to get out.

The jocks that used to stuff me into a locker when I was a punk rocker are my best buddies now.

As a result of manifest destiny, we gutted our resources.

We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves.

I know I've lost my mind. But I'm not concerned, because it's the first thing I've lost in a long time that actually feels good.

I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old - strangely, not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy.