Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

The word is now a virus.

Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality.

All abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another.

If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups" so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.

Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell.

I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].