Maybe if everyone walked around being in touch with each other's hidden pain it could work out and even be beautiful, but it doesn't feel safe to be the only compassionate person on the planet.

The horror of knowing someone and living with them and even thinking you're lucky and then wham and now you know that every person is really two people and how can you ever know what the other half is up to.

I drank some coffee and my outlook improved immensely. I was ready to write some poems and, I don’t know, get drunk, run around, take my shirt off and get kicked out of someplace. You know, live a little.

If I talk about the bad old days of crystal meth for too long, I start getting like, "Oh...speed...that was delicious..." But in general, I don't so much. Or wait - maybe the recklessness just occurs in a different sphere so it doesn't look like bottoming out. But really - isn't trying to have a baby sort of a reckless thing to do?

...people like to say things like 'all work is prostitution'. Most work is exploitation, but most work is not prostitution. Prostitution is prostitution, a very specific sort of exploitation... And while I am doing literal corrections to flippant turns of phrase, the earth doesn't get raped. It gets mined and poisoned and blown up and depleted, it gets ruined, but it doesn't get raped.

This is growing up, having to stomp out love, this is how people turn terrible.

You try to be good, to be good and loving and nice and not hard, not tough, a sweet nice girl, not ugly, not full of ugliness, but people make it impossible.