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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.

-Charles Bukowski

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You Know The Typical

Charles Bukowski

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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.

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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.

It Was Better For Me When I Could Imagine Greatness In Others, Even If It Wasn't Always There.

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

Angels, We Have Grown Apart.

It Doesn't Matter If Prince Charles Falls Off His Horse Or That The Hummingbird Is So Seldom Seen Or That We Are Too Senseless To Go Insane. Coffee. Give Us More Of That Nothing Coffee.

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. They Don't Honor Their Own Lives ... Their Minds Are Full Of Cotton. They Swallow God Without Thinking, They Swallow Country Without Thinking. Soon They Forget How To Think, They Let Others Think For Them.... Most People's Deaths Are A Sham. There's Nothing Left To Die.

I Used To Lay Drunk In Alleys And I Probably Will Again.bukowski, Who Is He? I Read About Bukowski And It Doesn't Seem Like Anything To Do With Me.

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

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

Loneliness And Solitude

Cautiously, I Allowed Myself To Feel Good At Times. I Found Moments Of Peace In Cheap Rooms Just Staring At The Knobs Of Some Dresser Or Listening To The Rain In The Dark. The Less I Needed The Better I Felt.

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

Well, I Don't Know About You But I'm Going To Try Everything! War, Women, Travel, Marriage, Children, The Works. [...]. I Want To Know About Things, What Makes Them Work!

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

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

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.

Never Trust A Man In A Jumpsuit

Never Trust A Man

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.

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?

Wherever The Crowd Goes Run In The Other Direction. They're Always Wrong.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Are On The Freeway Threading Through Traffic Now, Moving Both Towards Something And Towards Nothing At All As You Punch The Radio On And Get Mozart, Which Is Something, And You Will Somehow Get Through The Slow Days And The Busy Days And The Dull Days And The Hateful Days And The Rare Days, All Both So Delightful And So Disappointing Because We Are All So Alike And So Different.

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

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.

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

I Drive Around The Streets An Inch Away From Weeping, Ashamed Of My Sentimentality And Possible Love.

I've Never Met Another Man I'd Rather Be.

Bad Poetry Is Caused By People Who Sit Down And Think, Now I Am Going To Write A Poem.

Drinking Is Another Way Of Thinking, Another Way Of Living. It Gives You Two Lives Instead Of One.

I Wish To Weep But Sorrow Is Stupid. I Wish To Believe But Belief Is A Graveyard.

Don’t Do It. Don’t Love 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

My Heart Is A Thousand Years Old. I Am Not Like Other People.

I Have A Face Like A Washrag. I Sing Love Songs And Carry Steel. I Would Rather Die Than Cry. I Can't Stand Hounds Can't Live Without Them. I Hang My Head Against The White Refrigerator And Want To Scream Like The Last Weeping Of Life Forever But I Am Bigger Than The Mountains.

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

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.

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

I Could Never Accept Life As It Was, I Could Never Gobble Down All Its Poisons Bu There Were Parts, Tenuous Magic Parts Open For The Asking.

I've Found Out Why Men Sign Their Names To Their Works- Not That They Created Them But More Than The Others Did Not.

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Gradually I Came To Realize That My Understanding Of Women Goes Only As Far As The Pleasure Is Concerned.

I Lie As Truthfully As I Can.

Lawyers, Doctors, Plumbers, They All Made The Money. Writers? Writers Starved. Writers Suicided. Writers Went Mad.

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

Are You Becoming What You've Always Hated?

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

…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.

The Wisdom To Quit Is All We Have Left.

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Pain Is Absurd Because It Exists, Nothing More.

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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.

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Well, The Rain Had Stopped But The Pain Was Still There.

Those Who Escape Hell However Never Talk About It And Nothing Much Bothers Them After That

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...in That Drunken Place You Would Like To Hand Your Heart To Her And Say Touch It But Then Give It Back.

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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 Write Right Off The Typer. I Call It My "machinegun." I Hit It Hard, Usually Late At Night While Drinking Wine And Listening To Classical Music On The Radio And Smoking Mangalore Ganesh Beedies.

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.

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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.

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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.

There Are Only Two Things Wrong With Money: Too Much Or Too Little.

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.

I Had Decided Against Religion A Couple Of Years Back. If It Were True, It Made Fools Out Of People, Or It Drew Fools. And If It Weren't True, The Fools Were All The More Foolish. What I Need Is A Good Doctor, I Thought. You Either Lived Or Died.

Style Is The Answer To Everything. A Fresh Way To Approach A Dull Or Dangerous Thing

Places To Hunt Places To Hide Are Getting Harder To Find, And Pet Canaries And Goldfish Too, Did You Notice That?

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

Ability To Love

Banion Wondered Which Was Worse - Being Sodomized By Aliens, Or Having To Sit Through Two Hours Of Charles Ives.

Something That Never Happens Anywhere At Any Time.

I Should Think That Many Of Our Poets, The Honest Ones, Will Confess To Having No Manifesto. It Is A Painful Confession But The Art Of Poetry Carries Its Own Powers Without Having To Break Them Down Into Critical Listings. I Do Not Mean That Poetry Should Be Raffish And Irresponsible Clown Tossing Off Words Into The Void. But The Very Feeling Of A Good Poem Carries Its Own Reason For Being... Art Is Its Own Excuse, And It’s Either Art Or It’s Something Else. It’s Either A Poem Or A Piece Of Cheese.

There Is Light Somewhere.

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

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 Remembered My New Orleans Days, Living On Two Five-cent Candy Bars A Day For Weeks At A Time In Order To Have Leisure To Write. But Starvation, Unfortunately, Didn't Improve Art. It Only Hindered It. A Man's Soul Was Rooted In His Stomach. A Man Could Write Much Better After Eating A Porterhouse Steak And Drinking A Pint Of Whiskey Than He Could Ever Write After Eating A Nickel Candy Bar. The Myth Of The Starving Artist Was A Hoax.

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

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.

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.

Love Is A Form Of Prejudice. You Love What You Need, You Love What Makes You Feel Good, You Love What Is Convenient. How Can You Say You Love One Person When There Are Ten Thousand People In The World That You Would Love More If You Ever Met Them? But You'll Never Meet Them.

The Nine-to-five Is One Of The Greatest Atrocities Sprung Upon Mankind. You Give Your Life To A Function That Doesn't Interest You. This Situation So Repelled Me That I Was Driven To Drink, Starvation, And Mad Females, Simply As An Alternative.

There's Nothing Else As Pleasant As Being Unpleasant When There's Nothing Else To Do, And There's Usually Nothing Else To Do.

News Travels Fast In Places Where Nothing Much Ever Happens.

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.

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.

Four Days Alone With Nothing. Emerge Empowered. The First Human Face You See Will Knock You Back 50%.

I Carry Death In My Left Pocket. Sometimes I Take It Out And Talk To It: "hello, Baby, How You Doing? When You Coming For Me? I'll Be Ready.

It’s When You Hide Things That You Choke On Them.

‎"she’ Mad But She’ Magic. There’ No Lie In Her Fire.

It Was Only The Matter Of A New Voice. Nobody Listened To An Old Voice Anymore. Old Voices Became A Part Of One's Self, Like A Fingernail.

Human Relationships Didn't Work Anyhow. Only The First Two Weeks Had Any Zing, Then The Participants Lost Their Interest. Masks Dropped Away And Real People Began To Appear: Cranks, Imbeciles, The Demented, The Vengeful, Sadists, Killers. Modern Society Had Created Its Own Kind And They Feasted On Each Other. It Was A Duel To The Death--in A Cesspool.

The Best Thing About The Bedroom Was The Bed. I Liked To Stay In Bed For Hours, Even During The Day With Covers Pulled Up To My Chin. It Was Good In There, Nothing Ever Occurred In There, No People, Nothing.

Any Asshole Can Chase A Skirt, Art Takes Discipline.

Fiction Is An Improvement On Life

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.

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

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

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is Often Unbearable.

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

Thought Provoking

I Have Loved You Woman As Surely As I Have Named You Rust And Sand And Nylon.

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

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.

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

I Was In Love Again. I Was In Trouble

They Have No Idea That It Can Be Done By A Bus Driver, A Field Hand, Or A Fry Cook. They Have No Idea Where It Comes From. It Comes From Pain, Damnation And Impossibility. The Blow To The Soul Of The Gut. It Comes From Getting Burned And Seared And Slugged. It Comes From...new And Awful Places And The Same Old Places.

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.

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.

I've Never Been Lonely. I've Been In A Room... I've Felt Suicidal, I've Been Depressed. I've Felt Awful ... Awful Beyond All , But I Never Felt That One Other Person Could Enter That Room And Cure What Was Bothering Me...or That Any Number Of People Could Enter That Room. In Other Words, Loneliness Is Something I've Never Been Bothered With Because I've Always Had This Terrible Itch For Solitude.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Beautiful Are Found In The Edge Of A Room Crumpled Into Spiders And Needles And Silence And We Can Never Understand Why They Left,they Were So Beautiful. They Dont Make It, The Beautiful Die Young And Leave The Ugly To Their Ugly Lives.

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.

Meanwhile The 3 A.m. Drunks Of The World Would Lay In Their Beds, Trying In Vain To Sleep, And Deserving That Rest, If They Could Find It.

The Tigers Have Found Me And I Do Not Care.

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.

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

There Will Always Be Something To Ruin Our Lives, It All Depends On What Or Which Finds Us First. We Are Always Ripe And Ready To Be Taken.

Pretty Words, As Pretty Women, Wrinkle Up And Die.

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.

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.

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.

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

That's How It Is With Books, Isn't It: They're Not In A Hurry. They'll Wait For You Till You're Ready. People Empty Me. I Have To Go Away To Refill.

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

Figuring The Average Poet Starts At 16, I Am 23.

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

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

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.

Our Disappointment Sits Between Us.

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

Unless It Comes Out Of Your Soul Like A Rocket, Unless Being Still Would Drive You To Madness Or Suicide Or Murder, Don't Do It. Unless The Sun Inside You Is Burning Your Gut, Don't Do It. When It Is Truly Time, And If You Have Been Chosen, It Will Do It By Itself And It Will Keep On Doing It Until You Die Or It Dies In You. There Is No Other Way. And There Never Was.

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

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.

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

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.

We Sat There Smoking Cigarettes At 5 In The Morning.

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.

There Are Policemen In The Street And Angels In The Clouds

Well, People Got Attatched. Once You Cut The Umbilical Cord They Attatched To The Other Things. Sight, Sound, Sex, Money, Mirages, Mothers, Masturbation, Murder, And Monday Morning Hangovers.

Your Letters Got Sadder. Your Lovers Betrayed You. Kid, I Wrote Back, All Lovers Betray. It Didn't Help. You Said You Had A Crying Bench And It Was By A Bridge And The Bridge Was Over The River And You Sat On The Crying Bench Every Night And Wept For The Lovers Who Had Hurt And Forgotten You.

There Is Nothing As Boring As The Truth.

I Broke That Town In Half Like A Wooden Match.

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

I Am Aware That A Computer Can’t Create A Poem, But Neither Can A Typewriter.

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

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

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.

I Wanted The Whole World Or Nothing.

And Yet Women-good Women--frightened Me Because They Eventually Wanted Your Soul, And What Was Left Of Mine, I Wanted To Keep.

Most People Are Not Ready For Death, Theirs Or Anybody Elses.

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

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.

We Only Asked For Leopards To Guard Our Thinning Dreams.

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.

The Streets Were Full Of Insane & Dull People. Most Of Them Lived In Nice Houses And Didn't Seem To Work, And You Wondered How They Did It.

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.

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

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

It Was Too Much. The Comfortable People Made Comfortable Jokes About Weather And Things But I Sat Mostly Silent Saying A Word Or So When Necessary A Word Or So Trying To Hide From Them The Fact That I Was A Fool And Feeling Terrible And I Was Numb, Numb Again, Numb Again Again And Again, Numbness And Pain Swelling In Me.

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

My Ambition Is Handicapped By Laziness

The Secret Is Writing Down One Simple Line After Another.

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

It’s So Easy To Be Easy—if You Let It.

I Can Almost Understand Why People Leap From Bridges.

The Blankets Had Fallen Off And I Stared Down At Her White Back, The Shoulder Blades Sticking Out As If They Wanted To Grow Into Wings, Poke Through That Skin. Little Blades. She Was Helpless.

The Apartment Was Built At The Edge Of A High Cliff So That When You Looked Out The Back Window It Seemed As If You Were Twelve Floors Up Instead Of Four. It Was Very Much Like Living On The Edge Of The World - A Last Resting Place Before The Final Big Drop.

You've Got To Rise From The Floor Alone Or Fall Back Alone.

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.

Almost Everybody Is Born A Genius And Buried An Idiot.

Thought Provoking

Daddy,' My Mother Asked, 'aren’t We Going To Run Out Of Gas?' No There’s Plenty Of God-damned Gas.' Where Are We Going?' I’m Going To Get Some God-damed Oranges!

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.

I Guess For Me Hemingway Is A Lot Like It Is For Others: He Goes Down Well When We Are Young.

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.

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

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

Death Meant Little To Me. It Was The Last Joke In A Series Of Bad Jokes.

Are People Crazy? People Waited All Their Lives. They Waited To Live, They Waited To Die. They Waited In Line To Buy Toilet Paper. They Waited In Line For Money. And If They Didn't Have Any Money They Waited In Longer Lines. You Waited To Go To Sleep And Then You Waited To Awaken. You Waited To Get Married And You Waited To Get Divorced. You Waited For It To Rain, You Waited For It To Stop. You Waited To Eat And Then You Waited To Eat Again. You Waited In A Shrink's Office With A Bunch Of Psychos And You Wondered If You Were One.

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

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