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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.

-Charles Bukowski

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The Last Cigarettes Are

Charles Bukowski

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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.

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It Seemed Better To Delay Thinking.

The Human Body Is Mostly Blood And Mystery And Sadness.

Real Loneliness Is Not Necessarily Limited To When You Are Alone.

I Have Been Treated Better Than I Should Have Been---not By Life In General Nor By The Machinery Of Things But By Women.

It’s Never Quite Right, All The Things We Are Taught, All The Loves We Chase, All The Deaths We Die, All The Lives We Live.

I Grow Tired Of 18th Century Moralities In A 20th Century Space-atomic Age

Sex Can Sometimes Become The Most Horrible Of Tasks.

The History Of Melancholia Includes All Of Us.

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.

Love Is Kind Of Like When You See A Fog In The Morning, When You Wake Up Before The Sun Comes Out. It's Just A Little While, And Then It Burns Away... Love Is A Fog That Burns With The First Daylight Of Reality.

They Laughed. Things Were Funny. They Weren't Afraid To Care. There Was No Sense To Life, To The Structure Of Things.

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.

I Was Young I Was So Young It Hurt Like A Knife Inside Because There Was No Alternative Except To Hide As Long As Possible--- Not In Self-pity But With Dismay At My Limited Chance: Trying To Connect.

There's A Small Balcony Here, The Door Is Open And I Can See The Lights Of The Cars On The Harbor Freeway South, They Never Stop, That Roll Of Lights, On And On. All Those People. What Are They Doing? What Are They Thinking? We're All Going To Die, All Of Us, What A Circus! That Alone Should Make Us Love Each Other But It Doesn't.

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.

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.

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.

There Is A Loneliness In This World So Great That You Can See It In The Slow Movement Of The Hands Of A Clock

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

Never Bring A Lot Of Money To Where A Poor Man Lives. He Can Only Lose What Little He Has. On The Other Hand It Is Mathematically Possible That He Might Win Whatever You Bring With You. What You Must Do, With Money And The Poor, Is Never Let Them Get Too Close To One Another.

I Guess The Only Time Most People Think About Injustice Is When It Happens To Them.

The Human Race Had Always Disgusted Me. Essentially, What Made Them Disgusting Was The Family-relationship Illness, Which Included Marriage, Exchange Of Power And Aid, Which Neighborhood, Your District, Your City, Your County, Your State, Your Nation-everybody Grabbing Each Other's Assholes In The Honeycomb Of Survival Out Of A Fear-animalistic Stupidity.

There Must Be A Way. Surely There Must Be A Way That We Have Not Yet Thought Of. Who Put This Brain Inside Of Me? It Cries It Demands It Says That There Is A Chance. It Will Not Say "no.

Disneyland Remains The Central Attraction Of Southern California, But The Graveyard Remains Our Reality.

Death Is Nothing, Brother, It's Life That's Hard

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 Went To The Worst Of Bars Hoping To Get Killed But All I Could Do Was To Get Drunk Again.

I Wasn't Sleeping On The Streets At Night. Of Course, There Were A Lot Of Good People Sleeping In The Streets. They Weren't Fools, They Just Didn't Fit Into The Needed Machinery Of The Moment. And Those Needs Kept Altering.

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

I Was Naturally A Loner, Content Just To Live With A Woman, Eat With Her, Sleep With Her, Walk Down The Street With Her. I Didn't Want Conversation, Or To Go Anywhere Except The Racetrack Or The Boxing Matches. I Didn't Understand T.v. I Felt Foolish Paying Money To Go Into A Movie Theatre And Sit With Other People To Share Their Emotions. Parties Sickened Me. I Hated The Game-playing, The Dirty Play, The Flirting, The Amateur Drunks, The Bores.

Dogs And Angels Are Not Very Far Apart

I Am A Series Of Small Victories And Large Defeats.

Small Victories

If I Hadn't Been A Drunkard, I Probably Would Have Committed Suicide Long Ago.

Morning Night And Noon The Traffic Moves Through And The Murder And Treachery Of Friends And Lovers And All The People Move Through You. Pain Is The Joy Of Knowing The Unkindest Truth That Arrives Without Warning. Life Is Being Alone Death Is Being Alone. Even The Fools Weep Morning Night And Noon.

News Travels Fast In Places Where Nothing Much Ever Happens.

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?

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

But Right Now It's Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Bob Dylan All The Way.

They Looked As If Nothing Had Ever Touched Them--all Well-mothered, Protected, With A Soft Sheen Of Contentment. None Of Them Had Ever Been In Jail, Or Worked Hard With Their Hands, Or Even Gotten A Traffic Ticket. Skimmed-milk Jollies, The Whole Bunch.

Fay Had A Spot Of Blood On The Left Side Of Her Mouth And I Took A Wet Cloth And Wiped It Off. Women Were Meant To Suffer; No Wonder They Asked For Constant Declarations Of Love.

This Incompleteness Is All We Have.

There Is Enough Treachery , Hatred Violence Absurdity In The Average Human Being To Supply Any Given Army On Any Given Day

Find What You Love And Let It Kill You.

I No Longer Want It All, Just Some Comfort And Some Sex And Some Minor Love.

Beware Those Who Are Always Reading Books

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

There Are Worse Things Than Being Alone But It Often Takes Decades To Realize This And Most Often When You Do It's Too Late And There's Nothing Worse Than Too Late

We Must.. We Must Bring Our Own Light To The Darkness

I Pretend To Understand Because I Don't Want Anybody To Be Hurt

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.

You Begin Saving The World By Saving One Man At A Time; All Else Is Grandiose Romanticism Or Politics.

Don't Wait For The Good Woman. She Doesn't Exist. There Are Women Who Can Make You Feel More With Their Bodies And Their Souls But These Are The Exact Women Who Will Turn The Knife Into You Right In Front Of The Crowd.

I Knew It Would Be You

As We Go On With Our Lives We Tend To Forget That The Jails And The Hospitals And The Madhouses And The Graveyards Are Packed.

Never Trust A Man In A Jumpsuit

Never Trust A Man

Lighting New Cigarettes, Pouring More Drinks. It Has Been A Beautiful Fight. Still Is.

Writing Is Like Going To Bed With A Beautiful Woman And Afterwards She Gets Up, Goes To Her Purse And Gives Me A Handful Of Money.

I Was An Agnostic. Agnostics Didn't Have Much To Argue About.

A Day Of Minor Profit Or Prophet Led To A Night Of Drunkenness.

Never Get Out Of Bed Before Noon.

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.

Long Before I Became 'rich And Famous' I Just Sat Round Drinking Wine And Staring At The Walls.

Life Itself Is Not The Miracle. That Pain Should Be So Constant, That's The Miracle -

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.

Sometimes I Hate You," She Said.

To Me Art (poetry) Is A Continuous And Continuing Process And That When A Man Fails To Write Good Poetry He Fails To Live Fully Or Well.

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

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.

I Can See Where Creation Often Stops While The Body Still Lives And Often Does Not Care To. The Death Of Life Before Life Dies.

All A Guy Needed Was A Chance. Somebody Was Alway Controlling Who Got A Chance And Who Didn't.

When The Phone Rings I Too Would Like To Hear Words That Might Ease Some Of This.

Fiction Is An Improvement On Life

But She Projected Vitality - You Knew That She Was There.

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.

They, All Of Them, Seemed To Put Literary Form In Front Of The Actuality And Living Of Life Itself.

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

The Courage It Took To Get Out Of Bed Each Morning To Face The Same Things Over And Over Was Enormous.

So, That’s What They Wanted: Lies. Beautiful Lies. That’s What They Needed. People Were Fools. It Was Going To Be Easy For Me.

Her Eyes Always Had A Frantic, Lost Look. He Could Never Cure Her Eyes Of That.

Animals Never Worry About Heaven Or Hell. Neither Do I. Maybe That's Why We Get Along.

The Secret Is Writing Down One Simple Line After Another.

I Went Over To See Marina Two Or Three Or Four Times A Week. I Knew As Long As I Could See The Girl I Would Be All Right…. Soon After, I Got A Letter From Fay. She And The Child Were Living In A Hippie Commune In New Mexico. It Was A Nice Place, She Said. Marina Would Be Able To Breathe There. She Enclosed A Little Drawing The Girl Had Made For Me.

I Walked Around The Block Twice, Passed 200 People And Failed To See A Human Being.

We Had Such Tremendous Fun And Much Agony Together For Some Years

Alcohol Is Probably One Of The Greatest Things To Arrive Upon The Earth - Alongside Of Me.

You Just Rebel Against Everything. How Are You Going To Survive? I Don't Know. I'm Already Tired.

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

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

Thought Provoking

Some Men Hope For Revolution But When You Revolt And Set Up Your New Government You Find Your New Government Is Still The Same Old Papa, He Has Only Put On A Cardboard Mask.

Dog Is Much Admired By Man Because He Believes In The Hand Which Feeds Him. A Perfect Set-up. For 13 Cents A Day You've Got A Hired Killer Who Thinks You Are God. A Dog Can't Tell A Nazi From A Republican From A Commie From A Democrat And, Many Times, Neither Can I.

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

That's The Way It Ends. The Thin Edge Of The Wedge.

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

The Empty, The Angry, The Lonely, The Tricked, We Are All Museums Of Fear.

It's Hot Tonight And Half The Neighborhood Is Drunk. The Other Half Is Dead. If I Have Any Advice About Writing Poetry It's - Don't. I'm Going To Send Out For Some Fried Chicken.

I Am Not Like Other People. I Am Burning In Hell. The Hell Of Myself.

As A Child I Suppose I Was Not Quite Normal. My Happiest Times Were When I Was Left Alone In The House On A Saturday.

Nothing's News. It's The Same Old Thing In Disguise. Only One Thing Comes Without A Disguise And You Only See It Once, Or Maybe Never. Like Getting Hit By A Freight Train. Makes Us Realize That All Our Moaning About Long Lost Girls In Gingham Dresses Is Not So Important After All.

Women: I Liked The Colors Of Their Clothing; The Way They Walked; The Cruelty In Some Faces; Now And Then The Almost Pure Beauty In Another Face, Totally And Enchantingly Female. They Had It Over Us: They Planned Much Better And Were Better Organized. While Men Were Watching Professional Football Or Drinking Beer Or Bowling, They, The Women, Were Thinking About Us, Concentrating, Studying, Deciding - Whether To Accept Us, Discard Us, Exchange Us, Kill Us Or Whether Simply To Leave Us. In The End It Hardly Mattered; No Matter What They Did, We Ended Up Lonely And Insane.

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is Often Unbearable.

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.

The Artist," An Ancient Sage Had Once Said, "is Always Sitting On The Doorsteps Of The Rich.

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.

If You Want To Know Who Your Friends Are, Get Yourself A Jail Sentence.

I Hid In Bars, Because I Didn't Want To Hide In Factories.

I've Learned To Feel Good When I Feel Good. It's Better To Be Driven Around In A Red Porsche Than To Own One. The Luck Of The Fool Is Inviolate.

I Went To The Bathroom And Threw Some Water On My Face, Combed My Hair. If I Could Only Comb That Face, I Thought, But I Can't.

There Is Nothing That Teaches You More Than Regrouping After Failure And Moving On. Yet Most People Are Stricken With Fear. They Fear Failure So Much That They Fail. They Are Too Conditioned, Too Used To Being Told What To Do. It Begins With The Family, Runs Through School And Goes Into The Business World.

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

Turgenev Was A Very Serious Fellow But He Could Make Me Laugh Because A Truth First Encountered Can Be Very Funny. When Someone Else's Truth Is The Same As Your Truth, And He Seems To Be Saying It Just For You, That's Great.

Love Is A Horse With A Broken Leg Trying To Stand While 45,000 People Watch.

Don't Ever Write A Novel Unless It Hurts Like A Hot Turd Coming Out.

You Have My Soul And I Have Your Money

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

Pain Is Absurd Because It Exists, Nothing More.

For Those Who Believe In God, Most Of The Big Questions Are Answered. But For Those Of Us Who Can't Readily Accept The God Formula, The Big Answers Don't Remain Stonewritten. We Adjust To New Conditions And Discoveries. We Are Pliable. Love Need Not Be A Command Nor Faith A Dictum. I Am My Own God. We Are Here To Unlearn The Teachings Of The Church, State And Our Educational System. We Are Here To Drink Beer. We Are Here To Kill War. We Are Here To Laugh At The Odds And Live Our Lives So Well That Death Will Tremble To Take Us.

Sometimes There's Nothing To Say About Death.

There Is Nothing As Boring As The Truth.

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.

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 Difference Between A Democracy And A Dictatorship Is That In A Democracy You Vote First And Take Orders Later; In A Dictatorship You Don't Have To Waste Your Time Voting.

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.

American Women Drove Hard Bargains And The Ended Up Looking The Worst For It. The Few Natural American Women Left Were Mostly In Texas And Louisiana.

I Often Stood In Front Of The Mirror Alone, Wondering How Ugly A Person Could Get.

Don't Fight Your Demons. Your Demons Are Here To Teach You Lessons. Sit Down With Your Demons And Have A Drink And A Chat And Learn Their Names And Talk About The Burns On Their Fingers And Scratches On Their Ankles. Some Of Them Are Very Nice.

I Am Not A Man Who Looks For Solutions In God Or Politics. If Somebody Else Wants To Do The Dirty Work And Create A Better World For Us And He Can Do It, I Will Accept It.

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.

My Youth, One Time, That Time I Knew Even Through The Nothingness, It Was A Celebration Of Something Not To Do But Only Know.

Some Nights I Knew That If I Slept I Would Die.

That Was The Trouble With Being A Writer, That Was The Main Trouble—leisure Time, Excessive Leisure Time. You Had To Wait Around For The Buildup Until You Could Write And While You Were Waiting You Went Crazy, And While You Were Going Crazy You Drank And The More You Drank The Crazier You Got.

...having Nothing To Struggle Against They Have Nothing To Struggle For.

Why Don't We Go Back Out There And Tell Them What Happened? Because Nothing Happened Except That Everybody Has Been Driven Insane And Stupid By Life. In This Society There Are Only Two Things That Count: Don't Be Caught Without Money And Don't Get Caught High On Any Kind Of High. (night Streets Of Madness)

You Have To Die A Few Times Before You Can Really Live.

Before You Kill Something Make Sure You Have Something Better To Replace It With.

I Can Never Drive My Car Over A Bridge Without Thinking Of Suicide. I Can Never Look At A Lake Or An Ocean Without Thinking Of Suicide.

The Best Often Die By Their Own Hand Just To Get Away, And Those Left Behind Can Never Quite Understand Why Anybody Would Ever Want To Get Away From Them

Too Often, The Only Escape Is Sleep

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, And I Will Remember Your Small Room The Feel Of You The Light In The Window Your Records Your Books Our Morning Coffee Our Noons Our Nights Our Bodies Spilled Together Sleeping The Tiny Flowing Currents Immediate And Forever Your Leg My Leg Your Arm My Arm Your Smile And The Warmth Of You Who Made Me Laugh Again.

Inspirational Love

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

It Was Like The Beginning Of Life And Laughter. It Was The Real Meaning Of The Sun

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

To Experience Real Agony Is Something Hard To Write About, Impossible To Understand While It Grips You; You're Frightened Out Of Your Wits, Can’t Sit Still, Move, Or Even Go Decently Insane.

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

I Like The Way Mahler Wandered About In His Music And Still Retained His Passion. He Must Have Looked Like An Earthquake Walking Down The Street.

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out But I'm Too Clever, I Only Let Him Out At Night Sometimes When Everybody's Asleep. I Say, I Know That You're There, So Don't Be Sad. Then I Put Him Back, But He's Singing A Little In There, I Haven't Quite Let Him Die And We Sleep Together Like That With Our Secret Pact And It's Nice Enough To Make A Man Weep, But I Don't Weep, Do You?

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.

This Is Very Important -- To Take Leisure Time. Pace Is The Essence. Without Stopping Entirely And Doing Nothing At All For Great Periods, You're Gonna Lose Everything...just To Do Nothing At All, Very, Very Important. And How Many People Do This In Modern Society? Very Few. That's Why They're All Totally Mad, Frustrated, Angry And Hateful.

Angels, We Have Grown Apart.

There's A Light Somewhere. It May Not Be Much Light But It Beats The Darkness.

If You're Losing Your Soul And You Know It, Then You've Still Got A Soul Left To Lose.

Thought Provoking

I Often Carry Things To Read So That I Will Not Have To Look At The People.

Love Is A Form Of Prejudice. I Have Too Many Other Prejudices.

I Can Almost Understand Why People Leap From Bridges.

When You Clean Up A City, You Destroy It.

I'm Going, She Said. I Love You But You're Crazy, You're Doomed.

From The Beginning, Through The Middle Years And Up To The End: Too Bad, Too Bad, Too Bad.

I'm Not The Cruel Type, But They Are, And That's The Secret.

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.

I Was So Thin I Could Slice Bread With My Shoulderblades, Only I Seldom Had Bread.

The Worst Men Have The Best Jobs The Best Men Have The Worst Jobs Or Are Unemployed Or Locked In Madhouses.

My Body Gnaws At Me From One Side And My Spirit Gnaws At Me From The Other.

If You Can Only Remain Pure In Your Stupidity, Someday You May Get A Phone Call From Hell.

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.

If I Never See You Again I Will Always Carry You Inside Outside On My Fingertips And At Brain Edges And In Centers Centers Of What I Am Of What Remains.

I Needed A Vacation. I Needed 5 Women. I Needed To Get The Wax Out Of My Ears. My Car Needed An Oil Change. I'd Failed To File My Damned Income Tax. One Of The Stems Had Broken Off Of My Reading Glasses. There Were Ants In My Apartment. I Needed To Get My Teeth Cleaned. My Shoes Were Run Down At The Heels. I Had Insomnia. My Auto Insurance Had Expired. I Cut Myself Every Time I Shaved. I Hadn't Laughed In 6 Years. I Tended To Worry When There Was Nothing To Worry About. And When There Was Something To Worry About, I Got Drunk.

I Hated You When It Would Have Taken Less Courage To Love.

Courage To Love

Beauty Is Nothing, Beauty Won’t Stay. You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are To Be Ugly, Because If People Like You, You Know It’s For Something Else.

The Masses Are Everywhere They Know How To Do Things: They Have Sane And Deadly Angers For Sane And Deadly Things.

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.

This Is A World Where Everybody’s Gotta Do Something. Ya Know, Somebody Laid Down This Rule That Everybody’s Gotta Do Something, They Gotta Be Something. You Know, A Dentist, A Glider Pilot, A Narc, A Janitor, A Preacher, All That . . . Sometimes I Just Get Tired Of Thinking Of All The Things That I Don’t Wanna Do. All The Things That I Don’t Wanna Be. Places I Don’t Wanna Go, Like India, Like Getting My Teeth Cleaned. Save The Whale, All That, I Don’t Understand That . . .

I Didn't Like Anybody In That School. I Think They Knew That. I Think That's Why They Disliked Me. I Didn't Like The Way They Walked Or Looked Or Talked, But I Didn't Like My Mother Or Father Either. I Still Had The Feeling Of Being Surrounded By White Empty Space. There Was Always A Slight Nausea In My Stomach.

What A Weary Time Those Years Were -- To Have The Desire And The Need To Live But Not The Ability.

Love Breaks My Bones And I Laugh

And Now Sometimes I'm Interviewed, They Want To Hear About Life And Literature And I Get Drunk And Hold Up My Cross-eyed, Shot, Runover De-tailed Cat And I Say,"look, Look At This!" But They Don't Understand, They Say Something Like,"you Say You've Been Influenced By Celine?" No," I Hold The Cat Up,"by What Happens, By Things Like This, By This, By This!

Why Did I Come Here? I Thought. Why Is It Always Only A Matter Of Choosing Between Something Bad And Something Worse?

If You Have The Ability To Love, Love Yourself First.

Ability To Love

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

In The Morning It Was Morning And I Was Still Alive.

Morals Were Restrictive, But They Were Grounded On Human Experience.

Human Experience

I Have Gotten So Used To Melancholia That I Greet It Like An Old Friend.

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through The Fire

The World Is Full Of Boring, Identical And Mindless People.

I Don't Remember Going To Bed, But In The Morning, There I Was.

Our Bones Like Stems Into The Sky Will Forever Cry Victory

It Was Hard For Me To Believe. When Recess Was Over I Sat In Class And Thought About It. My Mother Had A Hole And My Father Had A Dong That Shot Juice. How Could They Have Things Like That And Walk Around As If Everything Was Normal, And Talk About Things, And Then Do It And Not Tell Anybody?

There Is Something About Writing Poetry That Brings A Man Close To The Cliff's Edge.

An Intellectual Says A Simple Thing In A Hard Way. An Artist Says A Hard Thing In A Simple Way.

Do You Hate People? I Don't Hate Them...i Just Feel Better When They're Not Around.

Bullfighting Can Be An Art Boxing Can Be An Art Loving Can Be An Art Opening A Can Of Sardines Can Be An Art

There's No Clarity. There Was Never Meant To Be Clarity.

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

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

Homosexuals Are Delicate And Bad Poetry Is Delicate And [allen] Ginsberg Turned The Tables By Making Homosexual Poetry Strong Poetry, Almost Manly Poetry; But In The Long Run, The Homo Will Remain The Homo And Not The Poet.

The Free Soul Is Rare, But You Know It When You See It

Unless The Sun Inside You Is Burning Your Gut, Don't Do It

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

I Was In Love Again. I Was In Trouble

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

People Were Interesting At First. Then Later, Slowly But Surely, All The Flaws And Madness Would Manifest Themselves. I Would Become Less And Less To Them; They Would Mean Less And Less To Me.

We Are Born Like This Into This Into These Carefully Mad Wars Into The Sight Of Broken Factory Windows Of Emptiness Into Bars Where People No Longer Speak To Each Other Into Fist Fights That End As Shootings And Knifings Born Into This Into Hospitals Which Are So Expensive That It’s Cheaper To Die Into Lawyers Who Charge So Much It’s Cheaper To Plead Guilty Into A Country Where The Jails Are Full And The Madhouses Closed Into A Place Where The Masses Elevate Fools Into Rich Heroes

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