I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.
some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout.
I drive around the streetsan inch away from weeping,ashamed of my sentimentality andpossible love.
She’s mad, but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.
my mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!why don’t you ever smile?”and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw
If I never see you again I will always carry youinsideoutsideon my fingertipsand at brain edgesand in centerscentersof what I am ofwhat remains.
People don’t need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn’t be.
It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.
I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.
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.
Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
having nothing to struggleagainstthey have nothing to strugglefor.
It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun
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.
Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.
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.
We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.
and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter
(the whole world is at thethroat of the world,everybody feels angry,short-changed, cheated,everybody is despondent,disillusioned.)I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards ofhappiness.
she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn’t feelalone.
That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.
You could sit in there all day drinking coffee and they never asked you to leave no matter how bad you looked. They just asked the bums not to bring their wine and drink it there. Places like that gave you hope when there wasn´t much hope.
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.
in this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck
Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.
Dying should come easy:like a freight train youdon’t hear whenyour back isturned.
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
the worst thing,” he told me,”is bitterness, people end up sobitter.
I see a brightportionunder the overhead lightthat shades intodarknessand then into darkerdarknessand I can’t see beyond that.
La mayoría de la muerte de la gente es una farsa, no queda en ellos nada que pueda morir
I believe that to be the world’s greatest livingwriterthere must be somethingterribly wrong with you.I don’t even want to be the world’s greatestdead writer.just being dead would be fairenough.
waitingin a life full of little storiesfor a death to come
I paid, got up, walkedto the door, openedit.I heard the mansay, “that guy’snuts.”out on the street Iwalked northfeelingcuriouslyhonored.
the best part waspulling down theshadesstuffing the doorbellwith ragsputting the phonein therefrigeratorand going to bedfor 3 or 4days. and the next bestpartwasnobody evermissedme.
Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that’s all there is to it.
when I am feelinglowall i have to do iswatch my catsand mycouragereturns
I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness.
And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.
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.
where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die,
that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)
I remember yoursaying: “make itor break it.”neither happened anditwon’t.
It got so bad that Al thoughtmaybe it washimso he went to a shrinkand askedand the shrink said,”you’re one of the sanest menI’ve ever met.”poor Al.that made him feelworse than ever.
Jag föddes för att kränga rosor på de dödas avenyer
great writers are indecent peoplethey live unfairlysaving the best part for paper.good human beings save the worldso that bastards like me can keep creating art,become immortal.if you read this after I am deadit means I made it.
He asked, “What makes a man a writer?” “Well,” I said, “it’s simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.
the writing of somemenis like a vast bridgethat carries youoverthe many thingsthat claw and tear.The Wine of Forever
unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it
nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.
writing about a writer’s block is better than not writing at all
take a writer away from his typewriterand all you have leftisthe sicknesswhich started himtypingin thebeginning
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.
not writing is not good but trying to write when you can’t is worse.
There’s no way I can stop writing, it’s a form of insanity.
Don’t ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out
Basically, that’s why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.
A good writer knew when not to write. Anybody could type. Not that I was a good typist also I couldn’t spell and I didn’t know grammar. But I knew when not to write. It was like fucking. You had to rest the godhead now and then.
The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.
If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.
Mëso të mos e shkatërrosh me fjalë atë çfarë ke ndërtuar me heshtje.
I had also read somewhere that if a man didn’t truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job
people need me. I fillthem. if they can’t see mefor awhile the get desperate, they getsick.but if I see them too oftenI get sick. it’s hard to feedwithout getting fed.
it’s good to have things done withwhen they don’t workit’s also good not to hateor even forgetthe person you’ve failed with.
Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell.
the tired sunsets and the tired people – it takes a lifetime to die and no time at all.
a life can change in a tenth ofa second.or sometimes it can take70years.
sometimes a man must fight so hard for life that he doesn’t have time to live it.
I could read the great books but the great books don’t interest me.
I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.
I am too sick to lay downthe sidewalks frighten methe whole damned city frightens me,what I will becomewhat I have becomefrightens me.
I didn’t like anything. Maybe I was afraid. That was it – I was afraid. I wanted to sit alone in a room with the shades down. I feasted upon that. I was a crank. I was a lunatic.
There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure ad moving on. Yet most people are stricken wth fear. They fear failure so much that they fail.
I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.
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.
I was alone with myself. And disgusting as I was it was better than being with somebody else, anybody else, all of them out there doing their pitiful little tricks and handsprings.
People just weren’t interesting. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn’t understand it.
I like to prowl ordinary placesand taste the people-from a distance.
I like to prowl ordinary places.I feel sorry for us all or glad for us allcaught alive togetherand awkward in that way.there’s nothing better than the jokeof usthe seriousness of usthe dullness of us
Do you hate people?”“I don’t hate them…I just feel better when they’re not around.
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 began to feel like a kept man and it felt great.
you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.
there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy
What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman.
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’s too much coldness in the world,” I told her. “If people would only talk things out together it would help.
Generally, I decided, it was better to wait, if you had any feeling for the individual. If you hated her right off, it was better to fuck her right off; if you didn’t, it was better to wait, then fuck her and hate her later on.
women were beyond me.they saw somethingdepraved.there was one waitressa little older thanI, she rather smiled,lingered when shebrought mycoffee.that was plenty for me, that wasenough.- Young in New Orleans
I don’t know. It’s been terribly hard for me. How do I know you won’t do it again?”Nobody is ever quite sure of what they will do. You aren’t sure what you might do.
When women agree with me I always do the other thing
I guess lesbianism wasn’t so rampant in those days, they would’ve gotten a bunk with each other and just left me alone, you know. Which would have been just as well, you know..
I’m not a guru. I wish you wouldn’t pose these things at me, man. Ask me about women or something.
good weatheris likegood women—it doesn’t always happenand when it doesit doesn’talways last.
Education was the new god, and educated men the new plantation masters.
All we do is sleep, and eat and lay around and make love. We’re like slugs. Slug-love, I call it.
the way to create art is to burn and destroyordinary concepts and to substitute themwith new truths that run down from the top of the headand out of the heart
if you have to wait for it to roar out ofyou,then wait patiently.if it never does roar out of you,do something else.
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.
When someone else’s truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that’s great.
The total ugliness and indifference of the worst features of the human race come out in their driving habits.
That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.
the first place smelled like work, so I took the second
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.
you shoulda known the entirety of the trap, a**hole,love means eventual painvictory means eventual defeatgrace means eventual slovenliness,there’s no wayout…you see, youunderstand?
my gardenin the sun and in the rainand in the day and in the nightpain is a flowerpain is flowersblooming all the time.
that’s ONE thing that’s wrong with intellectuals and writers – they don’t feel a hell of a lot except their own comfort or their own pain. which is normal but shitty.
Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,“I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.“Enough to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.
Music is much like fucking, but some composers can’t climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent.
I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.
The good times were over. Nobody gave a shit and nobody had any money and if they had any, they kept it.
all people start tocome apart finallyand there it is:just empty ashtrays in a roomor wisps of hair on a combin the dissolving moonlight.
the courage it took to get out of bed eachmorningto face the same thingsover and overwasenormous.
if it doesn’t come bursting out of youin spite of everything,don’t do it.unless it comes unasked out of yourheart and your mind and your mouthand your gut,don’t do it.
…they would say ‘he said this, he did that’, but they would never say ‘she said this, she did that’. So I would say, they are sick, and I am well. Pardon me.
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.
jan was an excellent fuck…she had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her.
It’s all overrated, man. Sex is only a great thing if you’re not getting any.
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
Walking out with the people, I didn’t know which was more exciting, the air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt.
I have, he went on, betrayed myself withbelief, deluded myself with lovetricked myself with sex.the bottle is damned faithful, he said,the bottle will not lie
I liked to fuck too, but it wasn’t my religion. There were too many ridiculous and tragic things about it. People didn’t seem to know how to handle it. So they made a toy out of it. A toy that destroyed people.
She would have been a better fuck in Greece, maybe. America was a shitty place to fuck.
You bitch,” I whispered, “I love you.” Then I came.
I write fiction””What’s fiction?””Fiction is an improvement on life.
The old gal was only another lonely creature in a world that didn’t care
it does seemthe more we drinkthe better the wordsgo.
I feel no grief for being called somethingwhichI am not;in fact, it’s enthralling, somehow, like a goodback rub
the price of creationis nevertoo high.the price of livingwith other peoplealwaysis.
the world is better withoutthem.only the plants and the animals aretrue comrades.I drink to them and withthem.
there are so many dayswhen living stops and pulls up and sitsand waits like a train on the rails.
Life wore a man out, wore a man thin.Tomorrow would be a better day.
Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work
I’m not dead yet, just in a state of rapid decay, who isn’t?
There’s a light somewhere.It may not be much light butit beats the darkness.
I know that some nightin some bedroomsoonmy fingers willriftthroughsoft cleanhairsongs such as no radioplaysall sadness, grinninginto flow.
Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can’t even cry.
Once in a rare lifetime have you ever been in a roomful of people who only helped you when you looked at them, listened to them. this was one of those magic times. I knew it.
Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately … good looking stuff; you’re doing all right.””Sam,” I say, “that’s not true; I am one of God’s most lonely men.
I could never acceptlife as it was,I could never gobbledown all itspoisonsbu there were parts,tenuous magic partsopen for theasking.
She had wild eyes, slightly insane. She also carried an overload of compassion that was real enough and which obviously cost her something.
I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.
being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.
there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock
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.
I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.
there’s no clarity.there was never meant to be clarity.
sometimes all we need to be able to continue aloneare the deadrattling the wallsthat close us in.
I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.
Why does a man destroy himself or what destroys him? I would have to judge that suicide is mostly the tool of the thinking man. The right to suicide should be the same as the right to love.
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.
She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.
If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.
What a weary time those years were — to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.
I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.
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.
people who eat 3 meals a day throughout lifehave never reallytastedFood…
There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.
The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us
the grace is being able to like rock music,symphony music, jazz …anything that contains the original energy ofjoy.
the people are the biggesthorror show on earth,have been forcenturies.
beware women grownoldwho were neveranything butyoung
I always felt it wouldpass.I listened to the charges against meknowing some of them to be truebut certainly notimportant enoughto become the target ofviolence, envy,vengeance.I thought it would surelypass.
beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone
regret is mostly caused by not havingdone anything.
I found the best thingI could dowas just to type awayat my own workand let the dyingdieas they always have.
one doesn’t even think ofthe liverand if the liverdoesn’t think ofus, that’sfine.
when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity ofmy city and it’s ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked theheartaway.
I didn’t know who tobelievebutone thing I doknow: when a man islivingmany claim relationshipsthat are hardlysoand after he dies, well,then it’s everybody’sparty.
There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out.
I didn’t know if I was unhappy. I felt too miserable to be unhappy.
(by the way . . . I realize I switch from present to past tense, and if you don’t like it . . . ram a nipple up your scrotum. -printer: leave this in.)
love needs too much help, he said.hate takes care of itself.
as the shadows assumeshapesI fight the slowretreatnowmy once-promisedwindlingdwindlingnowlighting new cigarettespouring moredrinksit has been a beautifulfightstillis.
the lies of centuries, the lies of love,the lies of Socrates and Blake and Christwill be your bedmates and tombstonesin a death that will never end.
my 6 foot goddessmakes me laughthe laughter of the mutilatedwho still needlove…she has saved mefrom everything that isnot here
The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.
Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.
Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?
People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.
the impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving this little bit of light towardusimpossibly.
Something else is hurting you – that’s why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can’t think.
as a childi supposei was not quitenormal.my happiest times werewheni was left alone inthe house on asaturday.
animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that’s why we get along
There’s no point in writing my kind of stuff, when they’re printing that kind of stuff. So I gave up and started drinking.
Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence.
Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It was appalling, it was disgusting, it was stupid.
The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever.
…still, I’m lucky: I feast on solitude, I will never miss the crowd. I could read the great books but the great books don’t interest me. I sit in bed and wait for the whole thing to go one way or the other. just like everybody else.
what you werewill not happen again.the tigers have found meand I do not care.
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.
I´ve given you my time. Its all I´ve got to give – its all any man has. And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour.
since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light
I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take.
I can see wherecreation oftenstops while thebody still livesand oftendoes not careto.the death of lifebefore lifedies.
Most so-called brave people lack imagination. As though they can’t conceive of what would happen if something went wrong. The truly brave overcome their imagination and do what they have to do.
Most so-called brave people lack imagination. As though they can’t conceive of what would happen if something went wrong. The truly brave overcome their imagination and do what they have to do. 2
my poems are only bits of scratchingon the floor of acage.
The Artist,” an ancient sage had once said, “is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.
How are his poems?””He’s not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.
We’ve each given the hours of our lives in dull rote jobs for other men’s profit, and have been asked to be grateful for doing that.
Animals are inspirational. They don’t know how to lie. They are natural forces.
my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.
no concept of danger, reality, flow or compassion. you can feel the despair escaping from their machines, their lives as hopeless and as numbed as yours.
My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people.
Ithink that theworld should be full of cats and full of rain, that’s all, justcats andrain, rain and cats, very nice, goodnight.
That’s your response to everything: drink?””No, that’s my response to nothing.
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 problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid one are full of confidence”.
there is enough treachery , hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day
and beware those whoonly takeinstructions from theirGodfor they havefailed completely to live their ownlives.
for meobedience to another is the decay of self.for though every being is similareach being is differentand to herd our differencesunder one lawdegrades each self.
Cats tell me without effort all that there is to know.
I am sad for the dead and I am sad for the livingbut not for my 5 cats
Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, just look at the cats, you’ll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.
The factories, the jails, the drunken days and nights, the hospitals have weakened and shaken me like a mouse in the mouth of a hip-cat: life.- from an Aug. 1965 letter to Jim Roman “On Cats
The cat is the beutiful devil. And here we can use the word, even without the “a.”- from a Dec. 21 1960, a letter to Sheri Martinelli”On Cats
I felt like a still live fish on ice in a butcher’s counter on Friday morning.- On Cats
Isolation is a gift. Everything else is just a test of your endurance. You will be alone with the Gods. Your nights will flame with fire.
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 was like a turd that drew flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired. I wanted to live alone,I felt best being alone, cleaner,,,
I kept telling myself that all the women in the world weren´t whores, just mine.
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.
Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.
Belane, are you nuts?”Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?
Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live.
I’ve learned to feel good when I feel good.it’s better to be driven around in a red porschethan to ownone. the luck of the fool is inviolate.
peace of mind and heartarriveswhen we accept what is:having beenborn into thisstrange lifewe must acceptthe wasted gamble of ourdaysand take some satisfaction inthe pleasure ofleaving it allbehind.
First paycheck I get, I thought, I’m going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.
There is always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.
I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread
The secret is writing down one simple line after another.
I think I need a drink.”Almost everybody does only they don’t know it.
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.
So where do you go? Back to the bottle And back to a tiny room somewhere. And wait. And wait, and wait. That’s all.
Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe. If you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn’t become obvious yourself.
Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that.
Endurance is more important than truth because without endurance there can’t be any truth. And truth means going to the end like you mean it. That way, death itself comes up short when it grabs
people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it’s great. an Academy Award means that you don’t stink quite as much as your cousin.
I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
from the beginning, through themiddle years and up to theend:too bad, too bad, too bad.
It’s like a movie, I thought, like a fucking movie. It seemed funny to me. It felt as if we were on camera. I liked it. It was better than the racetrack, it was better than the boxing matches. We kept drinking.
of one hundred movies there’s one that is fair, one that’s good and ninety eight that are very bad. most movies start badly and steadily get worse
Don’t you go to the movies?””Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark.
I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn’t know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important? And another part of me answered, just because it is.
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.
it doesn’t matter if Prince Charles falls off his horseor that the hummingbird is so seldomseenor that we are too senseless to goinsane.coffee. give us more of that NOTHINGcoffee.
the rent is a little higher herebut so far I’ve been able to pay itand that’s a miracle toolike still maybe being sanewhile thinking of guns and sidewalksand old ladies in libraries.
The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.
Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.
Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better because they know that everything is just as it is. There’s nothing to get excited about. They just know. They’re saviours.
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
I don’t like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions.
We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.
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.
I would be married, but I’d have no wife, I would be married to a single life.