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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.

-Charles Bukowski

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This Is Very Important

Charles Bukowski

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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.

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

When You Leave Your Typewriter You Leave Your Machine Gun And The Rats Come Pouring Through.

… And We Are In Bed Together Laughing And We Don’t Care About Anything.

Belane, Are You Nuts?" Who Knows? Insanity Is Comparative. Who Sets The Norm?

A Yet Women -good Women- Frightened Me Because They Eventually Wanted Your Soul, And What Was Left Of Mine, I Wanted To Keep. Basically I Craved Prostitutes, Base Women, Because They Were Deadly And Hard And Made No Personal Demands. Nothing Was Lost When They Left. Yet At The Same Time I Yearned For A Gentle, Good Woman, Despite The Overwhelming Price.

I Never Met Another Man I'd Rather Be. And Even If That's A Delusion, It's A Lucky One.

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

Human Experience

Great Art Is Horseshit, Buy Tacos.

They Say That Nothing Is Wasted: Either That Or It Al Is

I Lapsed Into My Pathetic Cut-off Period. Often With Humans, Both Good And Bad, My Senses Simply Shut Off, They Get Tired, I Give Up. I Am Polite. I Nod. I Pretend To Understand Because I Don’t Want Anybody To Be Hurt. That Is The One Weakness That Has Lead Me Into The Most Trouble. Trying To Be Kind To Others I Often Get My Soul Shredded Into A Kind Of Spiritual Pasta. No Matter. My Brain Shuts Off. I Listen. I Respond. And They Are Too Dumb To Know That I Am Not There.

I Wanted The Whole World Or Nothing.

Understand Me. I’m Not Like An Ordinary World. I Have My Madness, I Live In Another Dimension And I Do Not Have Time For Things That Have No Soul.

Don't Wait For The Good Woman. She Doesn't Exist.

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

Style Is The Answer To Everything. A Fresh Way To Approach A Dull Or Dangerous Thing. To Do A Dull Thing With Style Is Preferable To Doing A Dangerous Thing Without It. To Do A Dangerous Thing With Style Is What I Call Art.

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.

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

She Was Consumed By 3 Simple Things: Drink, Despair, Loneliness; And 2 More: Youth And Beauty

The Psyche Has Been Burned And Left Us Senseless, The World Has Been Darker Than Lights-out In A Closet Full Of Hungry Bats, And The Whiskey And Wine Entered Our Veins When Blood Was Too Weak To Carry On

It's Better To Be Happy...if You Can..!!

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

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

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.

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

We're All Going To Die, All Of Us, What A Circus!

I Wasn’t Lonely. I Experienced No Self-pity. I Was Just Caught Up In A Life In Which I Could ﬁnd No Meaning.

The Writing's Easy, It's The Living That Is Sometimes Difficult.

I'll Get Back To The Whores And The Horses And The Booze, While There's Time.

Being Alone Never Felt Right. Sometimes It Felt Good, But It Never Felt Right.

Loneliness And Solitude

I Suppose Like Others I Have Come Through Fire And Sword, Love Gone Wrong, Head-on Crashes, Drunk At Sea, And I Have Listened To The Simple Sound Of Water Running In Tubs And Wished To Drown

People With No Morals Often Considered Themselves More Free, But Mostly They Lacked The Ability To Feel Or Love.

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.

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.

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 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.

We Don’t Even Ask Happiness, Just A Little Less Pain.

I Remember Awakening One Morning And Finding Everything Smeared With The Color Of Forgotten Love.

No Matter How Little A Man Has He Will Find That He Will Always Settle For Less.

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

An Early Taste Of Death Is Not Necessarily A Bad Thing.

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

The Street To My Left Was Backed Up With Traffic And I Watched The People Waiting Patiently In The Cars. There Was Almost Always A Man And A Women, Staring Straight Ahead, Not Talking. It Was, Finally, For Everyone, A Matter Of Waiting. You Waited And You Waited- For The Hospital, The Doctor, The Plumber, The Madhouse, The Jail, Papa Death Himself. First The Signal Red, Then The Signal Was Green. The Citizens Of The World Ate Food And Watched T.v. And Worried About Their Jobs Or Lack Of The Same, While They Waited.

I Think A Man Can Keep On Drinking For Centuries, He'll Never Die; Especially Wine Or Beer...i Like Drunkards, Man, Because Drunkards, They Come Out Of It, And They're Sick And They Spring Back, They Spring Back And Forth...if I Hadn't Been A Drunkard, I Probably Would Have Committed Suicide Long Ago.

They Swallow God Without Thinking, They Swallow Country Without Thinking. Soon They Forget How To Think, They Let Others Think For Them.

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.

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

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

Sweet Christ, You Must Know That A Man Will Go Further For Any Poem Than For Any Woman Ever Born.

Sometimes You Climb Out Of Bed In The Morning And You Think, I'm Not Going To Make It, But You Laugh Inside — Remembering All The Times You've Felt That Way.

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

I Enjoy The Bad Things That Are Said About Me. It Enhances Sales And Makes Me Feel Evil. I Don't Like To Feel Good 'cause I Am Good. But Evil? Yes. It Gives Me Another Dimension.

You Are Yesterday's Bouquet So Sadly Raided

Agony Sometimes Changes Form But It Never Ceases For Anybody.

It Began As A Mistake.

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.

Slavery Was Never Abolished, It Was Only Extended To Include All The Colors.

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

Some Moments Are Nice, Some Are Nicer, Some Are Even Worth Writing About.

This Time Has Finished Me.

An Artist Is A Man Who Says A Difficult Thing In A Simple Way

We Only Asked For Leopards To Guard Our Thinning Dreams.

The Crowd Is The Gathering Place Of The Weakest; True Creation Is A Solitary Act.

Pain Is Absurd Because It Exists, Nothing More.

You Have My Soul And I Have Your Money

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

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.

They Thought I Had Guts They Were Wrong I Was Only Frightened Of More Important Things

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

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.

I Was Drawn To All The Wrong Things: I Liked To Drink, I Was Lazy, I Didn't Have A God, Politics, Ideas, Ideals.

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.

Genius Might Be The Ability To Say A Profound Thing In A Simple Way.

Everything Is Beautiful. We Have All This Beauty In The World And All We Have To Do Is Reach Out And Touch It, It Is All There And All Ours For The Taking." -- Cecilia To Henry Chinaski, Liberty Taken Changing Past Tense To Present Tense (173)

Pain Is Strange. A Cat Killing A Bird, A Car Accident, A Fire.... Pain Arrives, Bang, And There It Is, It Sits On You. It's Real. And To Anybody Watching, You Look Foolish. Like You've Suddenly Become An Idiot. There's No Cure For It Unless You Know Somebody Who Understands How You Feel, And Knows How To Help.

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

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.

And It Seems People Should Not Build Houses Anymore It Seems People Should Stop Working And Sit In Small Rooms On Second Floors Under Electric Lights Without Shades; It Seems There Is A Lot To Forget And A Lot Not To Do And In Drugstores, Markets, Bars, The People Are Tired, They Do Not Want To Move, And I Stand There At Night And Look Through This House And The House Does Not Want To Be Built

When You Clean Up A City, You Destroy It.

I Wasn’t Going Anywhere And Neither Was The Rest Of The World. We Were All Just Hanging Around Waiting To Die And Meanwhile Doing Little Things To Fill The Space. Some Of Use Weren’t Even Doing Little Things. We Were Vegetables.

There Still Might Be A Place For Us Somewhere.

Find What You Love And Let It Kill You. For All Things Will Kill You, Both Slowly And Fastly, But It’s Much Better To Be Killed By A Lover.

When I Get Down To My Last Dime I'll Just Walk Over To Skid Row." "there Are Some Real Weirdos Down There." "they're Everywhere.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

As The Shadows Assume Shapes I Fight The Slow Retreat Now My Once-promise Dwindling Dwindling Now Lighting New Cigarettes Pouring More Drinks It Has Been A Beautiful Fight Still Is.

Sex Can Sometimes Become The Most Horrible Of Tasks.

What? You’d Dare Drink Right After Getting Out Of Jail For Intoxication?” That’s When You Need A Drink The Most.

And When Love Came To Us Twice And Lied To Us Twice We Decided To Never Love Again That Was Fair Fair To Us And Fair To Love Itself. We Ask For No Mercy Or No Miracles; We Are Strong Enough To Live And To Die And To Kill Flies, Attend The Boxing Matches, Go To The Racetrack, Live On Luck And Skill, Get Alone, Get Alone Often, And If You Can't Sleep Alone Be Careful Of The Words You Speak In Your Sleep; And Ask For No Mercy No Miracles; And Don't Forget: Time Is Meant To Be Wasted, Love Fails And Death Is Useless.

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

It’s The Order Of Things: Each One Gets A Taste Of Honey Then The Knife.

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

I Had No Feeling For The Things So Many Others Needed.

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

But Isn't There Always One Good Thing To Look Back On? Think Of How Many Cups Of Coffee We Drank Together.

Do Some Living And Get Yourself A Typewriter.

Her One Drink Had Cecelia Giggling And Talking And She Was Explaining That Animals Had Souls Too. Nobody Challenged Her Opinion. It Was Possible, We Knew. What We Weren't Sure Of Was If We Had Any.

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.

Some People Have Written That My Writing Has Helped Them Go On. It Has Helped Me Too. The Writing, The Roses, The 9 Cats.

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

Love Is A Fog That Burns With The First Daylight Of Reality.

I Could See The Road Ahead Of Me. I Was Poor And I Was Going To Stay Poor. But I Didn't Particularly Want Money. I Didn't Know What I Wanted. Yes, I Did. I Wanted Someplace To Hide Out, Someplace Where One Didn't Have To Do Anything. The Thought Of Being Something Didn't Only Appall Me, It Sickened Me . . . To Do Things, To Be Part Of Family Picnics, Christmas, The 4th Of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . Was A Man Born Just To Endure Those Things And Then Die? I Would Rather Be A Dishwasher, Return Alone To A Tiny Room And Drink Myself To Sleep.

Humanity, You Never Had It From The Beginning." That Was My Motto.

You've Got To Know When To Let A Woman Go If You Want To Keep Her,and If You Don't Want To Keep Her You Let Her Go Anyhow So It's Always A Process Of Letting Go, One Way Or The Other.

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

There's No Defense Except All The Errors Made

There Are Times When Those Eyes Inside Your Brain Stare Back At You.

I'm Only Interested In Poetry.

I Guess We Often Get The Deep Blues, Both Of Us, And Wonder What It All Means- The People, The Buildings, The Day By Day Things, The Waste Of Time, Of Ourselves.

Once A Woman Turns Against You, Forget It. They Can Love You, Then Something Turns In Them. They Can Watch You Dying In A Gutter, Run Over By A Car, And They'll Spit On You.

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

That Your Power Of Command With Simple Language Was One Of The Magnificent Things Of Our Century. (from The Poem: Result)

People In Love Often Become Edgy, Dangerous. They Lose Their Sense Of Perspective.

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.

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.

Our Bones Like Stems Into The Sky Will Forever Cry Victory

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

It's 4:30 In The Morning, It's Always 4:30 In The Morning.

When I Am Feeling Low All I Have To Do Is Watch My Cats And My Courage Returns

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.

Invent Yourself And Then Reinvent Yourself.

Reinventing Yourself

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.

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

The Writer Has No Responsibility Other Than To Jack Off In Bed Alone And Write A Good Page.

I Broke That Town In Half Like A Wooden Match.

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

I Lie As Truthfully As I Can.

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.

For A Man Of 55 Who Didn't Get Laid Until He Was 23 And Not Very Often Until He Was 50 I Think That I Should Stay Listed Via Pacific Telephone Until I Get As Much As The Average Man Has Had

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

As A Recluse I Couldn't Bear Traffic. It Had Nothing To Do With Jealousy, I Simply Disliked People, Crowds, Anywhere, Except At My Readings. People Diminished Me, They Sucked Me Dry.

You Fall Into The Mirror, Come Through The Other Side Staring At A Lightbulb.

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

Trouble And Pain Were What Kept A Man Alive. Or Trying To Avoid Trouble And Pain. It Was A Full Time Job.

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.

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.

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.

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

There Is Enough Treachery, Hatred Violence Absurdity In The Average Human Being To Supply Any Given Army On Any Given Day And The Best At Murder Are Those Who Preach Against It And The Best At Hate Are Those Who Preach Love And The Best At War Finally Are Those Who Preach Peace

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

Style Means No Shield At All. Style Means No Front At All. Style Means Ultimate Naturalness. Style Means One Man Alone With Billions Of Men About.

Success Is Always Dangerous. It Can Make An Asshole Out Of Anybody.

I Kept Telling Myself That All The Women In The World Weren´t Whores, Just Mine.

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

It's Possible To Love A Human Being If You Don't Know Them Too Well.

What's Wrong With Assholes, Baby?

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.

I Don’t Understand People, Never Will. It Looks Like I Got To Travel Pretty Much Alone.

Magic Persists Without Us No Matter What We May Do To Try To Spoil It

There's A Bluebird In My Heart That Wants To Get Out But I'm Too Tough For Him, I Say, Stay In There, I'm Not Going To Let Anybody See You.

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

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

And Getting Dressed We Talk About What Else There Might Be To Do, But Being Together Solves Most Of It, In Fact, Solves All Of It

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!

Few Beautiful Women Were Willing To Indicate In Public That They Belonged To Someone. I Had Known Enough Women To Realize This. I Accepted Them For What They Were And Love Came Hard And Very Seldom. When It Did It Was Usually For The Wrong Reasons. One Simply Became Tired Of Holding Back Love And Let It Go Because It Needed Some Place To Go. Then, Usually, There Was Trouble.

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

Humanity, You Never Had It To Begin With.

Things Get Bad For All Of Us, Almost Continually, And What We Do Under The Constant Stress Reveals Who/what We Are.

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

If It Doesn't Come Bursting Out Of You In Spite Of Everything, Don't Do It. Unless It Comes Unasked Out Of Your Heart And Your Mind And Your Mouth And Your Gut, Don't Do It.

Experience Can Dull. With Most Men Experience Is A Series Of Mistakes; The More Experience You Have The Less You Know.

It's Just That The Grape Has Me Down.

Sometimes There's Nothing To Say About Death.

Bad Taste Creates Many More Millionaires Than Good Taste.

I Read My Books At Night, Like That, Under The Quilt With The Overheated Reading Lamp. Reading All Those Good Lines While Suffocating. It Was Magic.

It’s Hard To Drink When You Dance. And It’s Hard To Dance When You Drink.

When A Hot Woman Meets A Hermit One Of Them Is Going To Change.

Courts Are Places Where The Ending Is Written First And All That Precedes Is Simply Vaudeville.

I Am Going To Start Selling Air In Dark Orange Bags Marked: Moon-blooms

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.

Thanksgiving. It Proved You Had Survived Another Year With Its Wars, Inflation, Unemployment, Smog, Presidents. It Was A Grand Neurotic Gathering Of Clans: Loud Drunks, Grandmothers, Sisters, Aunts, Screaming Children, Would-be Suicides. And Don't Forget Indigestion. I Wasn't Different From Anyone Else: There Sat The 18-pound Bird On My Sink, Dead, Plucked, Totally Disemboweled. Iris Would Roast It For Me.

There's Music In Everything, Even Defeat

T Was Almost Disappointing Because It Seemed When Stress And Madness Were Eliminated From My Daily Life There Wasn't Much Left You Could Depend On.

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

A Spark Can Set A Whole Forest On Fire. Just A Spark. Save It.

Something That Never Happens Anywhere At Any Time.

My 6 Foot Goddess Makes Me Laugh The Laughter Of The Mutilated Who Still Need Love... She Has Saved Me From Everything That Is Not Here

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.

The Difference Between Art And Life Is That Art Is More Bearable

When A Writer Is Swayed With His Fame And His Fortune, You Can Float Him Down The River With The Turds.

I Think That Everything Should Be Made Available To Everybody, And I Mean Lsd, Cocaine, Codeine, Grass, Opium, The Works. Nothing On Earth Available To Any Man Should Be Confiscated And Made Unlawful By Other Men In More Seemingly Powerful And Advantageous Positions.

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.

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.

If You Can't Write The Next Line, Well, You're Dead. The Past Doesn't Matter.

She Is No Longer The Beautiful Woman She Was. She Sends Photos Of Herself Sitting Upon A Rock By The Ocean Alone And Damned. I Could Have Had Her Once. I Wonder If She Thinks I Could Have Saved Her?

When I Begin To Doubt My Ability To Work The Word, I Simply Read Another Writer And Know I Have Nothing To Worry About. My Contest Is Only With Myself, To Do It Right, With Power, And Force, And Delight, And Gamble.

I Was Drawn To All The Wrong Things: I Liked To Drink, I Was Lazy, I Didn't Have A God, Politics, Ideas, Ideals. I Was Settled Into Nothingness; A Kind Of Non-being, And I Accepted It. I Didn't Make For An Interesting Person. I Didn't Want To Be Interesting, It Was Too Hard. What I Really Wanted Was Only A Soft, Hazy Space To Live In, And To Be Left Alone.

Only The Boring Get Bored

The Role Of The Poet Is Almost Nothing...drearily Nothing. And When He Steps Outside Of His Boots And Tries To Get Tough As Our Dear Ezra [pound] Did, He Will Get His Pink Little Ass Slapped.

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

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

It Was A Joy! Words Weren't Dull, Words Were Things That Could Make Your Mind Hum. If You Read Them And Let Yourself Feel The Magic, You Could Live Without Pain, With Hope, No Matter What Happened To You.

If You Are Going To Try, Go All The Way Or Don't Even Start. If You Follow It You Will Be Alive With The Gods. It Is The Only Good Fight There Is.

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.

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.

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.

The Male, For All His Bravado And Exploration, Is The Loyal One, The One Who Generally Feels Love. The Female Is Skilled At Betrayal And Torture And Damnation.

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George R. R. Martin

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