It's redundant to die in Los Angeles.

I've got something inside of me, peasantlike and stubborn, and I'm in it till the end of the race.

Writing in the first person automatically gives you a point of view.

You don't run out on people; you run out on yourself.

I was terribly sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tried. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough.

Are the dead as lonesome as the living?

It's odd about tattoos. I've talked to several hundred men convicted of homicide-multiple homicide, in most cases. The only common denominate- I could find among them was tattoos. A good eighty percent of them were heavily tattooed.