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Most Of The World Was Mad. And The Part That Wasn't Mad Was Angry. And The Part That Wasn't Mad Or Angry Was Just Stupid. I Had No Chance. I Had No Choice. Just Hang On And Wait For The End. It Was Hard Work. It Was The Hardest Work Imaginable.

-Charles Bukowski

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Most Of The World

Charles Bukowski

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Most Of The World Was Mad. And The Part That Wasn't Mad Was Angry. And The Part That Wasn't Mad Or Angry Was Just Stupid. I Had No Chance. I Had No Choice. Just Hang On And Wait For The End. It Was Hard Work. It Was The Hardest Work Imaginable.

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..few Writers Like Other Writers' Works. The Only Time They Like Them Is When They Are Dead Or If They Have Been For A Long Time. Writers Only Like To Sniff Their Own Turds. I Am One Of Those. I Don't Even Like To Talk To Writers, Look At Them Or Worse, Listen To Them. And The Worst Is To Drink With Them, They Slobber All Over Themselves, Really Look Piteous, Look Like They Are Searching For The Wing Of The Mother. I'd Rather Think About Death Than About Other Writers. Far More Pleasant.

What Were You Going To Do Tonight?" "i Was Going To Listen To The Songs Of Rachmaninoff." "who's That?" "a Dead Russian.

I Didn't Have Any Friends At School, Didn't Want Any. I Felt Better Being Alone. I Sat On A Bench And Watched The Others Play And They Looked Foolish To Me.

I Had No Freedom. I Had Nothing.

I Am With The Roots Of Flowers Entwined, Entombed Sending Up My Passionate Blossoms As A Flight Of Rockets And Argument; Wine Churls My Throat, Above Me Feet Walk Upon My Brain, Monkies Fall From The Sky Clutching Photographs Of The Planets, But I Seek Only Music And The Leisure Of My Pain

I Was Laying In Bed One Night And I Thought 'i'll Just Quit - To Hell With It.' And Another Little Voice Inside Me Said 'don't Quit - Save That Tiny Little Ember Of Spark.' And Never Give Them That Spark Because As Long As You Have That Spark, You Can Start The Greatest Fire Again.

Where Some God Pissed A Rain Of Reason To Make Things Grow Only To Die.

There's No Chance At All: We Are All Trapped By A Singular Fate.

When You Drank The World Was Still Out There, But For The Moment It Didn’t Have You By The Throat.

Of Course, There Would Always Be Arguments. That Is The Nature Of Woman. They Like The Mutual Exchange Of Dirty Laundry, A Bit Of Screaming, A Bit Of Dramatics. Then An Exchange Of Vows.

There's Nothing To Mourn About Death Any More Than There Is To Mourn About The Growing Of A Flower. What Is Terrible Is Not Death But The Lives People Live Or Don't Live Up Until Their Death.

I Walk Into The Kitchen, Look At The Typer Down There On The Floor. It's A Dirty Floor. It's A Dirty Typer That Types Dirty Stories

In A More Universal Sense, We Only Get One Thing. You Know...a Head Stone If We're Lucky; If Not, Green Grass.

Show Me A Man Who Lives Alone And Has A Perpetually Clean Kitchen, And 8 Times Out Of 9 I'll Show You A Man With Detestable Spiritual Qualities.

And Love Is A Word Used Too Much And Much Too Soon.

That Was All A Man Needed: Hope. It Was Lack Of Hope That Discouraged A Man.

Love Be Damned Now As Love Was Damned When It First Arrived.

I’ve Had So Many Knives Stuck Into Me, When They Hand Me A Flower I Can’t Quite Make Out What It Is. It Takes Time.

There's Nothing To Stop A Man From Writing Unless That Man Stops Himself. If A Man Truly Desires To Write, Then He Will. Rejection And Ridicule Will Only Strengthen Him. And The Longer He Is Held Back The Stronger He Will Become, Like A Mass Of Rising Water Against A Dam. There Is No Losing In Writing, It Will Make Your Toes Laugh As You Sleep, It Will Make You Stride Like A Tiger, It Will Fire The Eye And Put You Face To Face With Death. You Will Die A Fighter, You Will Be Honored In Hell. The Luck Of The Word. Go With It, Send It.

Yes, Wagner And The Storm Intermix With The Wine As Nights Like This Run Up My Wrists And Up Into My Head And Back Down Into The Gut

The Whole World Is Caught In Her Glance And At Last The Universe Is Magnificent.

We Waste Days Like Mad Blackbirds And Pray For Alcoholic Nightsour Silk-sick Human Smiles Wrap Around Us Like Somebody Else's Confetti

Terror Finally Becomes Almost Bearable But Never Quite Terror Creeps Like A Cat Crawls Like A Cat Across My Mind

I Was Their Bar Freak, They Needed Me To Make Themselves Feel Better. Just Like, At Times, I Needed That Graveyard.

There Are So Many Days When Living Stops And Pulls Up And Sits And Waits Like A Train On The Rails.

We Drove On And On, Past Little Villages And Both Good Things And Bad Things Were Happening To The People In Those Villages Too, But I Still Was Nothing But Arms And Ears And Eyes And Maybe There'd Be Either Some Good Luck For Me Or More Death Tomorrow.

The Wisdom To Quit Is All We Have Left.

It Didn't Pay To Trust Another Human Being. Humans Didn't Have It, Whatever It Took.

The Secret Is Writing Down One Simple Line After Another.

In The Cupboard Sits My Bottle Like A Dwarf Waiting To Scratch Out My Prayers. I Drink And Cough Like Some Idiot At A Symphony, Sunlight And Maddened Birds Are Everywhere, The Phone Rings Gamboling Its Sound Against The Odds Of The Crooked Sea; I Drink Deeply And Evenly Now, I Drink To Paradise And Death And The Lie Of Love.

I Like Women Who Haven’t Lived With Too Many Men. I Don’t Expect Virginity But I Simply Prefer Women Who Haven’t Been Rubbed Raw By Experience. There Is A Quality About Women Who Choose Men Sparingly; It Appears In Their Walk In Their Eyes In Their Laughter And In Their Gentle Hearts. Women Who Have Had Too Many Men Seem To Choose The Next One Out Of Revenge Rather Than With Feeling. When You Play The Field Selfishly Everything Works Against You: One Can’t Insist On Love Or Demand Affection. You’re Finally Left With Whatever You Have Been Willing To Give Which Often Is: Nothing.

I'm Only Interested In Poetry.

The Dog Approached Again, Cautiously. I Found The Bologna Sandwich, Ripped Off A Chunk, Wiped The Cheap Watery Mustard Off, Then Placed It On The Sidewalk. The Dog Walked Up To The Bit Of Sandwich, Put His Nose To It, Sniffed, Then Turned And Walked Off. This Time He Didn't Look Back. He Accelerated Down The Street. No Wonder I Had Been Depressed All My Life. I Wasn't Getting Proper Nourishment.

It Is Possible To Be Truly Mad And To Still Exist Upon Scraps Of Life.

I Can't Think Of Any Poet-recluses Outside Of One Dead Jeffers. [robinson Jeffers] The Rest Of Them Want To Slobber Over Each Other And Hug Each Other. It Appears To Me That I Am The Last Of The Poet-recluses.

My Beerdrunk Soul Is Sadder Than All The Dead Christmas Trees Of The World.

A Dry Period For Me Means Perhaps Going Two Or Three Nights Without Writing. I Probably Have Dry Periods But I'm Not Aware Of Them And I Go On Writing, Only The Writing Probably Isn't Much Good.

I Didn't Like Parties.i Didn't Know How To Dance And People Frightened Me, Especially People At Parties. They Attempted To Be Sexy And Gay And Witty And Although They Hoped They Were Good At It, They Weren 't. They Were Bad At It. Their Trying So Hard Only Made It Worse.

You Have To Lay Down In The Center Of The Action Lay Down And Wait Until It Charges Then You Must Get Up Face It Get It Before It Gets You The Whole Process Is More Shy Than Vulnerable So Lay Down And Wait Sometimes It's Ten Minutes Sometimes It's Years Sometimes It Never Arrives But You Can't Rush It Push It There's No Way To Cheat Or Get A Jump On It You Have To Lay Down Lay Down And Wait Like An Animal .

A Woman Has To Have Something On Or There's Nothing To Take Off.

The Hangover Was Brutal But He Didn't Mind. It Told Him He Had Been Somewhere Else, Someplace Good.

The Ladies Usually Go For The Biggest Damn Fool They Can Find; That Is Why The Human Race Stands Where It Does Today: We Have Bred The Clever And Lasting Casanovas, All Hollow Inside, Like The Chocolate Easter Bunnies We Foster Upon Our Poor Children.

I Made Practice Runs Down To Skid Row To Get Ready For My Future.

I Am Not A Snob; It Is Simply That I Am Not Interested With What Most People Have To Say, Or What They Want To Do — Mostly With My Time.

That's The Problem With Drinking, I Thought, As I Poured Myself A Drink. If Something Bad Happens You Drink In An Attempt To Forget; If Something Good Happens You Drink In Order To Celebrate; And If Nothing Happens You Drink To Make Something Happen.

Drinking Is An Emotional Thing. It Joggles You Out Of The Standardism Of Everyday Life, Out Of Everything Being The Same.

Intellectuals Say Simple Things In Difficult Ways. Artists Say Difficult Things In Simple Ways.

My Flesh Looked Like It Wasn't Trying. It Looked Like It Hated Being Part Of Me.

Pull A String, A Puppet Moves ... Each Man Must Realize That It Can All Disappear Very Quickly: The Cat, The Woman, The Job, The Front Tire, The Bed, The Walls, The Room; All Our Necessities Including Love, Rest On Foundations Of Sand - And Any Given Cause, No Matter How Unrelated: The Death Of A Boy In Hong Kong Or A Blizzard In Omaha ... Can Serve As Your Undoing. All Your Chinaware Crashing To The Kitchen Floor, Your Girl Will Enter And You'll Be Standing, Drunk, In The Center Of It And She'll Ask: My God, What's The Matter? And You'll Answer: I Don't Know, I Don't Know.

I Knew Exactly What I Was Doing: I Was Doing Nothing. Because I Knew There Was Nothing To Do.

I Thought You Were Sane," I Said, "but You're Just As Crazy As The Rest Of Them.

Great Writers Are Indecent People They Live Unfairly Saving The Best Part For Paper. Good Human Beings Save The World So That Bastards Like Me Can Keep Creating Art, Become Immortal. If You Read This After I Am Dead It Means I Made It.

More Often Than Not Democratic Law Works To The Advantage Of The Few Even Though The Many Have Voted; This, Of Course, Is Because The Few Have Told Them How To Vote.

What A Woman Wants Is A Reaction. What A Man Wants Is A Woman.

People Need Me. I Fill Them. If They Can't See Me For A While They Get Desperate, They Get Sick. But If I See Them Too Often I Get Sick. It's Hard To Feed Without Getting Fed.

Angels, We Have Grown Apart.

The History Of Melancholia Includes All Of Us.

That The Young Rich Smell The Stink Of The Poor And Learn To Find It A Bit Amusing. They Had To Laugh, Otherwise It Would Be Too Terrifying.

My Dear, Find What You Love And Let It Kill You. Let It Drain You Of Your All. Let It Cling Onto Your Back And Weigh You Down Into Eventual Nothingness. Let It Kill You And Let It Devour Your Remains. For All Things Will Kill You, Both Slowly And Fastly, But It’s Much Better To Be Killed By A Lover. ~ Falsely Yours

There Was Nothing Glorious About The Life Of A Drinker Or The Life Of A Writer.

Beware The Average Man The Average Woman Beware Their Love, Their Love Is Average Seeks Average But There Is Genius In Their Hatred There Is Enough Genius In Their Hatred To Kill You To Kill Anybody Not Wanting Solitude Not Understanding Solitude They Will Attempt To Destroy Anything That Differs From Their Own Not Being Able To Create Art They Will Not Understand Art They Will Consider Their Failure As Creators Only As A Failure Of The World

It's Better To Do A Dull Thing With Style Than A Dangerous Thing Without It.

I Mean, Say That You Figure That Everything Is Senseless, Then It Can't Be Quite Senseless Because You Are Aware That It's Senseless And Your Awareness Of Senselessness Almost Gives It Sense. You Know What I Mean?

We Do Not Abandon Ship. I Say, As Corny As It May Sound, Through The Strength And Spirit And Fire And Dare And Gamble Of A Few Men In A Few Ways We Can Save The Carcass Of Humanity From Drowning. No Light Goes Out Until It Goes Out. Let's Fight As Men, Not Rats. Period. No Further Addition.

In My Next Life I Want To Be A Cat. To Sleep 20 Hours A Day And Wait To Be Fed. To Sit Around Licking My Ass.

You Are Yesterday's Bouquet So Sadly Raided

God Knows I Am Not Too Hippy. Perhaps Because I Am Too Much Around The Hip And I Fear Fads For, Like Anybody Else, I Like Something That Tends To Last.

I Take Much Pleasure In Being Alone But There Is Also A Strange Warm Grace In Not Being Alone.

2 P.m. Beer Nothing Matters But Flopping On A Mattress With Cheap Dreams And A Beer As The Leaves Die And The Horses Die And The Landladies Stare In The Halls; Brisk The Music Of Pulled Shades, A Last Man's Cave In An Eternity Of Swarm And Explosion; Nothing But The Dripping Sink, The Empty Bottle, Euphoria, Youth Fenced In, Stabbed And Shaven, Taught Words Propped Up To Die.

I See Men Assassinated Around Me Every Day. I Walk Through Rooms Of The Dead, Streets Of The Dead, Cities Of The Dead; Men Without Eyes, Men Without Voices; Men With Manufactured Feelings And Standard Reactions; Men With Newspaper Brains, Television Souls And High School Ideas.

Human Relationships Simply Aren't Durable. I Think Back To The Women In My Life. They Seem Non-existent.

Joan Of Arc Had Style. Jesus Had Style.

I Never Pump Up My Vulgarity. I Wait For It To Arrive In Its Own Terms.

Nobody Can Save You But Yourself. You Will Be Put Again And Again Into Nearly Impossible Situations. They Will Attempt Again And Again Through Subterfuge, Guise And Force To Make You Submit, Quit And/or Die Quietly Inside. Nobody Can Save You But Yourself

Impossible Situations

It Was Sad, It Was Sad, It Was Sad. When Betty Came Back We Didn't Sing Or Laugh, Or Even Argue. We Sat Drinking In The Dark, Smoking Cigarettes, And When We Went To Sleep, I Didn't Put My Feet On Her Body Or She On Mine Like We Used To. We Slept Without Touching. We Had Both Been Robbed.

A Woman Is A Full Time Job. You Have To Choose Your Profession.

What Good Are You? What Can You Do? It Has Cost Me A Thousands Of Dollars To Raise You, Feed You, Clothe You! Suppose I Left You Here On The Street? Then What Would You Do?" "catch Butterflies

Almost Everybody Is Born A Genius And Buried An Idiot.

Thought Provoking

You've Got To Burn Straight Up And Down And Then Maybe Sidewise For A While And Have Your Guts Scrambled By A Bully And The Demonic Ladies, You've Got To Run Along The Edge Of Madness Teetering, You've Got To Starve Like A Winter Alleycat, You've Go To Live With The Imbecility Of At Least A Dozen Cities, Then Maybe Maybe Maybe You Might Know Where You Are For A Tiny Blinking Moment.

I Don't Carry Notebooks And I Don't Consciously Store Ideas. I Try Not To Think That I Am A Writer And I Am Pretty Good At Doing That. I Don't Like Writers, But Then I Don't Like Insurance Salesmen Either.

There Would Never Be A Way For Me To Live Comfortably With People. Maybe I'd Become A Monk. I'd Pretend To Believe In God And Live In A Cubicle, Play An Organ And Stay Drunk On Wine.

I Can't Blame Her. But Wonder Why She's Here With Me? Where Are The Other Guys? How Can You Be Lucky? Having Someone The Others Have Abandoned?

Hell, I'd Even Failed With Women. Three Wives. Nothing Really Wrong Each Time. It All Got Destroyed By Petty Bickering. Railing About Nothing. Getting Pissed-off Over Anything And Everything. Day By Day, Year By Year, Grinding. Instead Of Helping Each Other You Just Sliced Away, Picked At This Or That. Goading. Endless Goading. It Became A Cheap Contest. And Once You Got Into It, It Became Habitual. You Couldn't Seem To Get Out. You Almost Didn't Want To Get Out. And Then You Did Get Out. All The Way.

How Can You Be True And Kind At The Same Time? How?

Modern Women ... They Don't Sew Your Pockets ... Forget That.

There Is Light Somewhere.

The Last Cigarettes Are Smoked, The Loaves Are Sliced, And Lest This Be Taken For Wry Sorrow, Drown The Spider In Wine. You Are Much More Than Simply Dead: I Am A Dish For Your Ashes, I Am A Fist For Your Vanished Air. The Most Terrible Thing About Life Is Finding It Gone.

If I Stop Writing I Am Dead. And That's The Only Way I'll Stop: Dead.

Some Of My Poems Indicate That I Am Writing While Living Alone After A Split With A Woman, And I've Had Many Splits With Women. I Need Solitude More Often When I'm Not Writing Than When I Am.

You Know The Typical Crowd, Wow, It’s Friday Night, What Are You Going To Do? Just Sit There? Well, Yeah. Because There’s Nothing Out There. It’s Stupidity. Stupid People Mingling With Stupid People. Let Them Stupidify Themselves. I’ve Never Been Bothered With The Need To Rush Out Into The Night. That’s All. Sorry For All The Millions, But I’ve Never Been Lonely. I Like Myself. I’m The Best Form Of Entertainment I Have.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. This Could Mean Losing Girlfriends, Wives, Relatives, Jobs And Maybe Your Mind.

I Was Born To Hustle Roses Down The Avenue Of The Dead.

Human Relationships Are Strange. I Mean, You Are With One Person A While, Eating And Sleeping And Living With Them, Loving Them, Talking To Them, Going Places Together, And Then It Stops.

Sometimes I Get Too Exhausted To Even Feel Bad

Whiskey Makes The Heart Beat Faster But It Sure Doesn't Help The Mind And Isn't It Funny How You Can Ache Just From The Deadly Drone Of Existence?

When I Was Young I Was Depressed All The Time. But Suicide No Longer Seemed A Possibility In My Life. At My Age There Was Very Little Left To Kill. It Was Good To Be Old, No Matter What They Said. It Was Reasonable That A Man Had To Be At Least 50 Years Old Before He Could Write With Anything Like Clarity.

Yes?’ He Asked, Looking At Me Over The Sheet. ‘i’m A Writer Temporarily Down On My Inspirations.’ ‘oh, A Writer, Eh?’ ‘yes.’ ‘are You Sure?’ ‘no, I’m Not.’ ‘what Do You Write?’ ‘short Stories Mostly. And I’m Halfway Through A Novel.’ ‘a Novel, Eh?’ ‘yes.’ ‘what’s The Name Of It?’ ‘”the Leaky Faucet Of My Doom.”‘ ‘oh, I Like That. What’s It About?’ ‘everything.’ ‘everything? You Mean, For Instance, It’s About Cancer?’ ‘yes.’ ‘how About My Wife?’ ‘she’s In There Too.

People Are Strange: They Are Constantly Angered By Trivial Things, But On A Major Matter Like Totally Wasting Their Lives, They Hardly Seem To Notice.

The Problem Was You Had To Keep Choosing Between One Evil Or Another, And No Matter What You Chose, They Sliced A Little More Off You, Until There Was Nothing Left. At The Age Of 25 Most People Were Finished. A Whole Goddamned Nation Of Assholes Driving Automobiles, Eating, Having Babies, Doing Everything In The Worst Way Possible, Like Voting For The Presidential Candidate Who Reminded Them Most Of Themselves.

I Was In Love Again. I Was In Trouble

Now Something So Sad Has Hold Of Us That The Breath Leaves And We Can't Even Cry.

Sometimes You Just Have To Pee In The Sink.

We Are Hardly Ever As Strong As That Which We Create.

It’s Nice Enough To Make A Man Weep, But I Don’t Weep, Do You?

The People Are The Biggest Horror Show On Earth, Have Been For Centuries.

You Don't Go On "probably" When Love And Guns Are In Hand.

The Pest, In A Sense, Is A Very Superior Being To Us: He Knows Where To Find Us And How--usually In The Bath Or In Sexual Intercourse Or Asleep.

I Have Seen Too Many Men Wilt And Go Silly Under A Little Light, And Then They Continue To Write And Get Published, Turning Out Pure Crap Under A Name That Has Become A Bad Habit. The Next Poem Is All That Counts. You Can't Stand On Past Poems.

Poetry Is What Happens When Nothing Else Can.

Sometimes There's Luck, When There Is You Stock Up On It And Wait For The Other Times

Sex Is Interesting, But It's Not Totally Important. I Mean It's Not Even As Important (physically) As Excretion. A Man Can Go Seventy Years Without A Piece Of Ass, But He Can Die In A Week Without A Bowel Movement.

Be It Peace Or Happiness Let It Enfold You

But Then If You Lied To A Man About His Talent Just Because He Was Sitting Across From You, That Was The Most Unforgivable Lie Of Them All, Because That Was Telling Him To Go On, To Continue Which Was The Worst Way For A Man Without Real Talent To Waste His Life, Finally. But Many People Did Just That, Friends And Relatives Mostly.

First Paycheck I Get, I Thought, I'm Going To Get Myself A Room Near The Downtown L.a. Public Library.

Sometimes I Feel As If We Are All Trapped In A Movie. We Know Our Lines, Where To Walk, How To Act, Only There Is No Camera. Yet, We Can't Break Out Of The Movie. And It's A Bad One.

The Whole Lsd, Stp, Marijuana, Heroin, Hashish, Prescription Cough Medicine Crowd Suffers From The "watchtower" Itch: You Gotta Be With Us, Man, Or You're Out, You're Dead. This Pitch Is A Continual And Seeming Must With Those Who Use The Stuff. It's No Wonder They Keep Getting Busted.

Too Often The People Complain That They Have Done Nothing With Their Lives And Then They Wait For Somebody To Tell Them That This Isn't So.

If You Let Them Kill You, They Will

Something That Never Happens Anywhere At Any Time.

I'm Very Clever At Hiding Poems Perhaps More Clever Than I Am At Writing Them.

They Never Pay The Slaves Enough So They Can Get Free, Just Enough So They Can Stay Alive And Come Back To Work.

I Knew It Would Be You

I Would Say That Mickey Mouse Has A Greater Influence On The American Public Than Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Rabelais, Shostakovitch, Lenin, And/or Van Gogh. Which Says 'what?' About The American Public. Disneyland Remains The Central Attraction Of Southern California, But The Graveyard Remains Our Reality.

Your Parents Don't Give You Much Love, Do They?' 'i Don't Need That Stuff,' I Told Her. 'henry, Everybody Needs Love.' 'i Don't Need Anything.' 'you Poor Boy.

The Trouble With A Mask Is It Never Changes

The Free Soul Is Rare, But You Know It When You See It - Basically Because You Feel Good, Very Good, When You Are Near Or With Them.

I Like To Change Liquor Stores Frequently Because The Clerks Got To Know Your Habits If You Went In Night And Day And Bought Huge Quantities. I Could Feel Them Wondering Why I Wasn't Dead Yet And It Made Me Uncomfortable. They Probably Weren't Thinking Any Such Thing, But Then A Man Gets Paranoid When He Has 300 Hangovers A Year.

Those Faces You See Every Day On The Streets Were Not Created Entirely Without Hope: Be Kind To Them: Like You They Have Not Escaped.

One More Drink And You're Dead. This Is No Way To Talk To A Suicide Head.

After Dinner Or Lunch Or Whatever It Was -- With My Crazy 12-hour Night I Was No Longer Sure What Was What -- I Said, "look, Baby, I'm Sorry, But Don't You Realize That This Job Is Driving Me Crazy? Look, Let's Give It Up. Let's Just Lay Around And Make Love And Take Walks And Talk A Little. Let's Go To The Zoo. Let's Look At Animals. Let's Drive Down And Look At The Ocean. It's Only 45 Minutes. Let's Play Games In The Arcades. Let's Go To The Races, The Art Museum, The Boxing Matches. Let's Have Friends. Let's Laugh. This Kind Of Life Like Everybody Else's Kind Of Life: It's Killing Us.

There's No Way I Can Stop Writing, It's A Form Of Insanity.

It Is Good To Be Sitting Some Place In Public At 2:30 In The Afternoon Without Getting The Flesh Ripped From Your Bones.

I Was Fighting A Small Fight Of My Own Which Wasn't Leading Anywhere-but Like A Man With A Bent Spoon Trying To Dig Through A Cement Wall I Knew That A Small Fight Was Better Than Quitting: It Kept The Heart Alive.

I've Never Been Lonely. I Like Myself. I'm The Best Form Of Entertainment I Have. Let's Drink More Wine!

The Wisest Thing To Do If You’re Living In Hell Is To Make Yourself Comfortable.

There's Nothing Unusual About Love.

Never Envy A Man His Lady. Behind It All Lays A Living Hell.

The Years Have Gone By Quickly. Death Sits In The Seat Next To Me. We Make A Lovely Couple.

Censorship Is The Tool Of Those Who Have The Need To Hide Actualities From Themselves And From Others. Their Fear Is Only Their Inability To Face What Is Real, And I Can't Vent Any Anger Against Them. I Only Feel This Appalling Sadness. Somewhere, In Their Upbringing, They Were Shielded Against The Total Facts Of Our Existence. They Were Only Taught To Look One Way When Many Ways Exist.

The Human Heart, As Of Course We All Know Is Essentially Good

Simplicity Is Always The Secret, To A Profound Truth, To Doing Things, To Writing, To Painting. Life Is Profound In Its Simplicity

Lsd, Yeah, The Big Parade – Everybody's Doin' It Now. Take Lsd, Then You Are A Poet, An Intellectual. What A Sick Mob. I Am Building A Machine Gun In My Closet Now To Take Out As Many Of Them As I Can Before They Get Me.

I Got Up And Walked Back To My Roominghouse. The Moonlight Was Bright. My Footsteps Echoed In The Empty Street And It Sounded As If Somebody Was Following Me, I Looked Around. I Was Mistaken. I Was Quite Alone.

…he Was Always High On Drugs. I Was Not A Drug Man, But In Case I Wanted To Hide From Myself For A Few Days, I Knew I Could Get Anything I Wanted From Him.

I Do Not Like To Work And Have No Trade But I Do Like To Eat, So This Is Basic, The Basic Training Of Slaves To Fear.

I Will Remember The Kisses, Our Lips Raw With Love, And How You Gave Me Everything You Had And How I Offered You What Was Left Of Me.

Most People Are Much Better At Saying Things In Letters Than In Conversation, And Some People Can Write Artistic, Inventive Letters, But When They Try A Poem Or Story Or Novel They Become Pretentious.

Bad Taste Creates Many More Millionaires Than Good Taste.

The Problem With The World Is That The Intelligent People Are Full Of Doubts, While The Stupid Ones Are Full Of Confidence.

It Was Like A Church In There As Only The Truly Lost Sit In Bars On Tuesday Mornings At 8:00 A.m.

Those Who Preach God, Need God Those Who Preach Peace Do Not Have Peace Those Who Preach Love Do Not Have Love

Love Is All Right For Those Who Can Handle The Psychic Overload. It's Like Trying To Carry A Full Garbage Can On Your Back Over A Rushing River Of Piss.

Writing About A Writer's Block Is Better Than Not Writing At All

It's Not The Large Things That Send A Man To The Madhouse... No, It's The Continuing Series Of Small Tragedies... Not The Death Of His Love But The Shoelace That Snaps With No Time Left.

People Run From Rain But Sit In Bathtubs Full Of Water.

For Each Joan Of Arc There Is A Hitler Perched At The Other End Of The Teeter-totter.

Escape From The Black Widow Spider Is A Miracle As Great As Art. What A Web She Can Weave Slowly Drawing You To Her She'll Embrace You Then When She's Satisfied She'll Kill You Still In Her Embrace And Suck The Blood From You.

Love Iz A Big Fat Turkey And Every Day Iz Thanksgiving

People Were Usually Much Better In Their Letters Than In Reality. They Were Much Like Poets In This Way.

The Trouble With These People Is That Their Cities Have Never Been Bombed And Their Mothers Have Never Been Told To Shut Up.

You Can Steal My Women But Don't Play With My Whiskey.

Fiction Is An Improvement On Life

I Knew I Was Strong, And Maybe Like They Said, "crazy." But I Had This Feeling Inside Of Me That Something Real Was There.

Never Get Out Of Bed Before Noon.

With Me, My Main Vision For Life Was To Avoid As Many People As Possible. The Less People I Saw The Better I Felt.

I Was Only Photographing In Words The Reality Of It All.

There Are Policemen In The Street And Angels In The Clouds

To Do A Dull Thing With Style-now That's What I Call Art.

Thought Provoking

But My Whole Life Has Been A Matter Of Fighting For One Simple Hour To Do What I Want To Do. There Was Always Something Getting In The Way Of My Getting To Myself.

Any Asshole Can Chase A Skirt, Art Takes Discipline.

If I'm An Ass, I Should Say So. If I Don't, Somebody Else Will. If I Say It First, That Disarms Them.

Potential," I Said, "doesn't Mean A Thing. You've Got To Do It. Almost Every Baby In A Crib Has More Potential Than I Have.

To Not To Have Entirely Wasted One’s Life Seems To Be A Worthy Accomplishment, If Only For Myself.

I'm Going To Open Another Vottle. Not A Vottle, But A Bottle. You Open It And I'll Drink It. And You Try To Write As Much As I Did Without Falling Off Of Your Chair.

I Have No Time For Things That Have No Soul.

The Writing Of Some Men Is Like A Vast Bridge That Carries You Over The Many Things That Claw And Tear. The Wine Of Forever

Since Some People Had Told Me That I Was Ugly, I Always Preferred Shade To The Sun, Darkness To Light

Some People Never Go Crazy, What Truly Horrible Lives They Must Live.

Boring Damned People. All Over The Earth. Propagating More Boring Damned People. What A Horror Show. The Earth Swarmed With Them.

There Is Nothing As Boring As The Truth.

Well, Death Says, As He Walks By, I'm Going To Get You Anyhow No Matter What You've Been: Writer, Cab-driver, Pimp, Butcher, Sky-diver, I'm Going To Get You

A Man Who Can Beat The Horses Can Do Anything He Makes Up His Mind To Do.

We Only Asked For Leopards To Guard Our Thinning Dreams.

I Tell You Such Fine Music Waits In The Shadows Of Hell.

Christmas Poem To A Man In Jail Hello Bill Abbott: I Appreciate Your Passing Around My Books In Jail There, My Poems And Stories. If I Can Lighten The Load For Some Of Those Guys With My Books, Fine. But Literature, You Know, Is Difficult For The Average Man To Assimilate (and For The Unaverage Man Too); I Don't Like Most Poetry, For Example, So I Write Mine The Way I Like To Read It.

If You're Going To Try, Go All The Way. There Is No Other Feeling Like That. You Will Be Alone With The Gods, And The Nights Will Flame With Fire. You Will Ride Life Straight To Perfect Laughter. It's The Only Good Fight There Is.

Hemingway And Saroyan Had The Line, The Magic Of It. The Problem Was That Hemingway Didn't Know How To Laugh And Saroyan Was Filled With Sugar.

Mercy, I Think, Doesn't The Human Race Know Anything About Mercy?

I Don't Think I'll Travel Anymore. Travel Is Nothing But An Inconvenience. There Is Always Enough Trouble Where You Are.

I Remember When Each 4th Lot Was Vacant And Overgrown, And The Landlord Only Go This Rent When You Had It, And Each Day Was Clear And Good And Each Moment Was Full Of Promise.

Sometimes There's Nothing To Say About Death.

If You Think They Didn't Go Crazy In Tiny Rooms Just Like You're Doing Now Without Women Without Food Without Hope Then You're Not Ready.

I Seldom Know What I'm Going To Write When I Sit Down. There Isn't Much Agony And Sweat Of The Human Spirit Involved In Doing It. The Writing's Easy, It's The Living That Is Sometimes Difficult.

It's Good To Have Things Done With When They Don't Work It's Also Good Not To Hate Or Even Forget The Person You've Failed With.

Oh, I Don’t Mean You’re Handsome, Not The Way People Think Of Handsome. Your Face Seems Kind. But Your Eyes - They’re Beautiful. They’re Wild, Crazy, Like Some Animal Peering Out Of A Forest On Fire.

Finally There Is Nothing Here For Death To Take Away.

I Am A Dolt Of A Man, Easily Made Happy Or Even Stupidly Happy Almost Without Cause And Left Alone I Am Mostly Content.

Alone With Everybody The Flesh Covers The Bone And They Put A Mind In There And Sometimes A Soul, And The Women Break Vases Against The Walls And Them Men Drink Too Much And Nobody Finds The One But They Keep Looking Crawling In And Out Of Beds. Flesh Covers The Bone And The Flesh Searches For More Than Flesh. There's No Chance At All: We Are All Trapped By A Singular Fate. Nobody Ever Finds The One. The City Dumps Fill The Junkyards Fill The Madhouses Fill The Hospitals Fill The Graveyards Fill Nothing Else Fills.

If There Are Junk Yards In Hell, Love Is The Dog That Guards The Gates.

Death Is Not The Problem; Waiting Around For It Is.

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