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.
Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
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
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.
And there I was 225 pounds perpetually lost and confused short legs ape-like upper body all chest no neck head too large blurred eyes hair uncombed 6 feet of geek waiting for her.
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.
as the spirit wanes the form appears
it seemed to me that I had never met another person on earth as discouraging to my happiness as my father. and it appeared that I had the same effect upon him.
Something that never happens anywhere at any time.
The Difference Between Art and Life is that Art is More Bearable
Death is not the problem; waiting around for it is.
Great art is horseshit buy tacos.
and then there are some who believe that old relationships can be revived and made new again. but please if you feel that way don't phone don't write don't arrive
I never pump up my vulgarity. I wait for it to arrive in its own terms.
love be damned now as love was damned when it first arrived.
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.
Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style.
For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.
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.
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.
dogs and angels are not very far apart
there are policemen in the street and angels in the clouds
Angels we have grown apart.
The empty the angry the lonely the tricked we are all museums of fear.
lay down. lay down like an animal and wait.
animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along
I can't blame her. but wonder why she's here with me? where are the other guys? how can you be lucky? having someone the others have abandoned?
Love is a Dog from Hell.
The Artist " an ancient sage had once said "is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.
Are you anti-black?I'm anti-everything.
there is enough treachery hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day
Most people are not ready for death theirs or anybody elses.
I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt
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
People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.
Understand me. Iâ??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.
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.
for meobedience to another is the decayof self
I've never met another man I'd rather be.
pain is absurd because it exists nothing more.
Existence was not only absurd it was plain hard work
Drinking is another way of thinking another way of living. It gives you two lives instead of one.
there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy
so it's always a process of letting go one way or another
Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer.
Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California but the graveyard remains our reality.
To not to have entirely wasted oneâ??s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment if only for myself.
Let it die. Let there be a new beginning. Itâ??s awful. Goodnight.
i was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead.
Figuring the average poet starts at 16 I am 23.
I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.
take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning
People empty me. I have to get away to refill.
I am aware that a computer canâ??t create a poem but neither can a typewriter.
I am ashamed to be a member of the human race but I don't want to add any more to that shame I want to scrape a little of it off.
don't be ashamed of anything; I guess God meant it all like locks on doors.
I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.
I could never acceptlife as it was I could never gobbledown all itspoisonsbu there were parts tenuous magic partsopen for theasking.
we only asked for leopards to guard our thinning dreams.
We donâ??t even ask happiness just a little less pain.
If you want to know where God is ask a drunk.
Bullfighting can be an art Boxing can be an art Loving can be an art Opening a can of sardines can be an art
A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class
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.
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
The pest in a sense is a very superior being to us: he knows where to find us and how--usually in the bath or in sexual intercourse or asleep.
how can you be true and kind at the same time? how?
Some lose all mind and become soul insane. some lose all soul and become mind intellectual. some lose both and become accepted
I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age
There's nothing unusual about love.
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!
Long ago among other lies they were taught that silence was bravery.
I was beaten down long ago in some alley in another world.
If I hadn't been a drunkard I probably would have committed suicide long ago.
I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't have much to argue about.
They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life to the structure of things.
There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on.
Drink from the well of yourself and begin again.
I was in love again. I was in trouble
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.
it is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.
I 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.
The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.
People with no morals often considered themselves more free but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.
If you have the ability to love love yourself first.
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?
Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.
I didn't feel that way about it. I had been playing with death for some time. I can't say we were the best of friends but we were well acquainted.
one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid
Slavery was never abolished it was only extended to include all the colors.
They all of them seemed to put literary form in front of the actuality and living of life itself.
my hands dead my heart dead silence adagio of rocks the world ablaze that's the best for me.
I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here.
I am sick with caring.
It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others even if it wasn't always there.
Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.
I am a dolt of a man easily made happy or even stupidly happy almost without cause and left alone I am mostly content.
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.
Almost everyone is born a genius and buried an idiot.
Love is alright for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss!!
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.
That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh otherwise it would be too terrifying.
An early taste of death is not necessarily a bad thing.
My ambition is handicapped by laziness
It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.
We waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nightsour silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti
Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth - alongside of me.
they say that nothing is wasted: either that or it al is
In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
Banion wondered which was worse - being sodomized by aliens or having to sit through two hours of Charles Ives.
I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.
i am going to start selling air in dark orange bags marked: moon-blooms
agony sometimes changes form but it never ceases for anybody.
we had such tremendous fun and much agony together for some years
To experience real agony is something hard to write about impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits canâ??t sit still move or even go decently insane.
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.
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.
I will put on my shoes and shirt and get out of here - it'll be better for all of us.
All we do is sleep and eat and lay around and make love. We're like slugs. Slug-love I call it.
Well we lost it and thatâ??s all there is to that.
It will rain all this night and we will sleep transfixed by the dark water as our blood runs through our fragile life.
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.
I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain that's all just cats and rain rain and cats very nice good night.
bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it
Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit.
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 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.
crawled like a blind slug into the web
There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out.
I just want a hot cup of coffee black and I donâ??t want to hear about your troubles.
the worst thing " he told me "is bitterness people end up sobitter.
writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all
I walked around the block twice passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.
Love breaks my bones and I laugh
our bones like stems into the sky will forever cry victory
The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.
Sundays kill more people than bombs.
but right now it's Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Bob Dylan all the way.
We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting
the sea is made of blood
...the human body is mostly blood and mystery and sadness...
I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a coffee cup in a park for old men playing chess or silly games of some sort.
There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.
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.
The less I needed the better I felt.
Life wore a man out wore a man thin.Tomorrow would be a better day.
It seemed better to delay thinking.
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
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.
If I bet on humanity I'd never cash a ticket.
Keep your money in your pocket. Or bet it on a good horse.
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 better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.
People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.
Things will be far worse than they are now. And far better. I wait.
With me my main vision for life was to avoid as many people as possible. The less people I saw the better I felt.
Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?
My part of the game is that I must live the best I can.
the best part waspulling down theshadesstuffing the doorbellwith ragsputting the phonein therefrigeratorand going to bedfor 3 or 4days. and the next bestpartwasnobody evermissedme.
Sometimes a man doesnâ??t know what to do about things and sometimes itâ??s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.
the people are the biggest horror show on earth have been for centuries.
love iz a big fat turkey and every day iz thanksgiving
Beware Those Who Are ALWAYS READING BOOKS
Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.
Our disappointment sits between us.
I don't like jail they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
We use such big words to move nowhere.
the world is better withoutthem.only the plants and the animals aretrue comrades.I drink to them and withthem.
We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar.
regret is mostly caused by not havingdone anything.
the gods play nofavorites.
I run with the hunted.
the gods seldomgivebut so quicklytake.
she wasn't veryinterestingbut few peopleare.
sometimes it's hard to knowwhat todo.
having nothing to struggleagainstthey have nothing to strugglefor.
To create art means to be crazy aloneforever.
it does seemthe more we drinkthe better the wordsgo.
and love is a word usedtoo much andmuchtoo soon.
You're the most unknown famous man I ever met
there's no clarity.there was never meant to be clarity.
some moments are nice some arenicer some are even worthwritingabout.
My cock was hard but my spirit wasn't in it.
He fell off the table like a crab looking for the sea.
one doesn't even think ofthe liverand if the liverdoesn't think ofus that'sfine.
the price of creationis nevertoo high.the price of livingwith other peoplealwaysis.
Medju nama nije bilo nikakve veze osim sto smo pili i vodili ljubav.
My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people.
as the shadows assumeshapesI fight the slowretreatnowmy once-promisedwindlingdwindlingnowlighting new cigarettespouring moredrinksit has been a beautifulfightstillis.
where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die
Are there good governments and bad governments? No there are only bad governments and worse governments.
I often stood in front of the mirror alone wondering how ugly a person could get.
I see a brightportionunder the overhead lightthat shades intodarknessand then into darkerdarknessand I can't see beyond that.
sometimes all we need to be able to continue aloneare the deadrattling the wallsthat close us in.
Everything you own must be able to fit inside one suitcase; then your mind might be free.
that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)
she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone.
I feel no grief for being called somethingwhichI am not;in fact it's enthralling somehow like a goodback rub
I paid got up walkedto the door openedit.I heard the mansay "that guy'snuts."out on the street Iwalked northfeelingcuriouslyhonored.
I found the best thingI could dowas just to type awayat my own workand let the dyingdieas they always have.
when you're younga pair offemalehigh-heeled shoesjust sittingalonein the closetcan fire yourbones;when you're oldit's justa pair of shoeswithoutanybodyin themandjust aswell.
Basically that's why I wrote: to save my ass to save my ass from the madhouse from the streets from myself.
How are his poems?""He's not as good as he thinks he is but then most of us feel that way.
when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity ofmy city and it's ugly ugly ugly: the living have choked theheartaway.
They took all the joy out of fucking by talking about it all the time. I liked to fuck too but it wasn't my religion.
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.
Love is not a candle burning down. Life is. And love and life are not the same or else Love having choice nobody would ever die.
Why do we embroider everything we saywith special emphasis when all we really need to dois simply say whatneeds to he said?Of coursethe fact isthat there is very little that needsto be said.
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.
I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.
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.
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.
Love is a horse with a broken leg trying to stand while 45 000 people watch.
I broke that town in half like a wooden match.
The hangover was brutal but he didn't mind. It told him he had been somewhere else someplace good.
Death is nothing brother it's life that's hard
there's no chance at all: we are all trapped by a singular fate.
Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance?
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.
If it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything donâ??t do it.
Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.
I was their bar freak they needed me to make themselves feel better. just like at times I needed that graveyard.
unless the sun inside you is burning your gut don't do it
I am not like other people. I am burning in hell. The hell of myself.
I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair.
Those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that
you are yesterday's bouquet so sadly raided
Yeah? Well if there's anything worse than a whore it's a bore.
I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse I did but didn't.
Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.
There is nothing as boring as the truth.
The world is full of boring identical and mindless people.
Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing the dirty play the flirting the amateurs drunks the bores.
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
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.
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.
We must.. We must bring our own light to the darkness
Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.
There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.
The difference between a brave man and a coward is a coward thinks twice before jumping in the cage with a lion. The brave man doesn't know what a lion is. He just thinks he does.
I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades only I seldom had bread
I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!
God is a lonely place without steak.
great books are the ones we need
Life's as kind as you let it be.
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.
Humanity you never had it to begin with.
Tell him to seek the stars and he will kill himself with climbing.
I knew it would be you
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.
Baby " I said "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me.
What's wrong with assholes baby?
terror finally becomes almost bearable but never quite terror creeps like a cat crawls like a cat across my mind
Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself.
I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.
We are hardly ever as strong as that which we create.
The world had somehow gone too far and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy.
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.
Never trust a man in a jumpsuit
Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.
Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.
There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there.
I hid in bars because I didn't want to hide in factories.
I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.
It was like a church in there as only the truly lost sit in bars on Tuesday mornings at 8:00 a.m.
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.
Love dries up I thought as I walked back to the bathroom even faster than sperm.
i do not like to work and have no trade but i do like to eat so this is basic the basic training of slaves to fear...
She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and in a way beautiful but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.
writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.
it's better to be happy...if you can..!!
People don't do me much good.
but isn't there always one good thing to look back on? think of how many cups of coffee we drank together.
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work.
They were beautiful nothings
Careful poetry and careful people live only long enough to die safely.
Only the boring get bored
I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze while there's time.
Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father an early marriage an early success or the ability to do anything well.
I would be married but I'd have no wife I would be married to a single life.
There's nothing else as pleasant as being unpleasant when there's nothing else to do and there's usually nothing else to do.
It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.
the grace is being able to like rock music symphony music jazz â?¦ anything that contains the original energy of joy.
I take much pleasure in being alone but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.
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
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.
My flesh looked like it wasn't trying. It looked like it hated being part of me.
Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life out of everything being the same.
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
being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.
Courage comes from the belly - all else is desperation.
Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly â?? all else is desperation.
The park grass looked greener the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder.
The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us
People who believe in politics are like people who believe in God: they are sucking wind through bent straws.
True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.
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.
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
Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think Now I am going to write a Poem.
You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn't deceive anybody. It's the deceivers who make you feel bad.
I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.
she was consumed by 3 simple things: drink despair loneliness; and 2 more: youth and beauty
I don't remember going to bed but in the morning there I was.
â?¦ and we are in bed together laughing and we donâ??t care about anything.
Never get out of bed before noon.
Are you becoming what you've always hated?
hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.
There's a light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness.
Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.
A man who can beat the horses can do anything he makes up his mind to do.
they simply never understand do they that sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth?
Maybe when I get in the grave things will be beautiful.
So thatâ??s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. Thatâ??s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for 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.
You have to die a few times before you can really live.
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.
Before my death I hope to obtain my life.
stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover.
I am for the small man who has not forgotten for the man who loves his beer and his women and his sunlight
Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line.
It began as a mistake.
It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun
from the beginning through the middle years and up to the end: too bad too bad too bad.
Humanity you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.
I'm too careless. I don't put out enough effort. I'm tired.
I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.
when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns
Some people have written that my writing has helped them go on. It has helped me too. The writing the roses the 9 cats.
the whole world is caught in her glance and at last the universe is magnificent.
I wasnâ??t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could ï¬nd no meaning.
To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.
my youth one time that time I knew even through the nothingness it was a celebration of something not to do but only know.
Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others.
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.
The trouble with a mask is it never changes
Any asshole can chase a skirt art takes discipline.
Itâ??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.
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.
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.
Itâ??s when you hide things that you choke on them.
The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another and no matter what you chose they sliced a little bit more off you until there was nothing left.
Sweet Christ you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born.
my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.
Lighting new cigarettes pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.
We're all going to die all of us what a circus!
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.
When you clean up a city you destroy it.
Success is always dangerous. It can make an asshole out of anybody.
I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together.
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.
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'm very clever at hiding poems perhaps more clever than I am at writing them.
There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff's edge.
Music is much like fucking but some composers can't climax and others climax too often leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent.
Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think I'm not going to make it but you laugh inside â?? remembering all the times you've felt that way.
there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock
... to die on a kitchen floor at 7 o'clock in the morning while other people are frying eggs is not so rough unless it happens to you.
and the color in my eyes has gone back into the sea.
I no longer want it all just some comfort and some sex and some minor love.
The wisest thing to do if youâ??re living in hell is to make yourself comfortable.
The night kept coming on in and there was nothing I could do.
Don't ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out.
places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find and pet canaries and goldfish too did you notice that?
Complaint is often the result of an insufficient ability to live within the obvious restrictions of this god damned cage.
Belane are you nuts?" Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?
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.
the way to create art is to burn and destroy ordinary concepts and to substitute them with new truths that run down from the top of the head and out of the heart
Gradually I came to realize that my understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasure is concerned.
life itself is not the miracle. that pain should be so constant that's the miracle -
I hope that death contains less than this.
Things get bad for all of us almost continually and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.
Capitalism has survived communism. Now it eats away at itself.
It's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse... no it's the continuing series of small tragedies... not the death of his love but the shoelace that snaps with no time left.
All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.
In a capitalistic society the losers slaved for the winners and you have to have more losers than winners.
They swallow God without thinking they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think they let others think for them.
The years have gone by quickly. Death sits in the seat next to me. We make a lovely couple.
I hated you when it would have taken less courage to love.
Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.
The human heart as of course we all know is essentially good
Courts are places where the ending is written first and all that precedes is simply vaudeville.
Anything anything to stop drowning in this dull trivial and cowardly existence.
I am this fiery snail crawling home.
Some people never go crazy What truly horrible lives they must live.
I'm going she said. I love you but you're crazy you're doomed.
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.
If you want to create you'll create...
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.
one more creature dizzy with love
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.
and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter
the tigers have found me and I do not care.
but as God said crossing his legs I see where I have made plenty of poets but not so very much poetry.
Wherever the crowd goes run in the other direction. They're always wrong.
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'm not the cruel type but they are and that's the secret.
love needs too much help he said.hate takes care of itself.
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.
Her eyes always had a frantic lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that.
Lawyers doctors plumbers they all made the money. Writers? Writers starved. Writers suicided. Writers went mad.
The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it there is not one who will resist.
I went home each night dizzy and sick. He was murdering me with the sound of his voice.
Donâ??t do it. Donâ??t love me.
Simplicity is always the secret to a profound truth to doing things to writing to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity
I knew exactly what I was doing: I was doing nothing. because I knew there was nothing to do.
If there are junk yards in hell love is the dog that guards the gates.
If you can't write the next line well you're dead. The past doesn't matter.
purple does something strange to me
we must bringour own lightto thedarkness.
I have one problem I donâ??t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.
That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.
since some people had told me that I was ugly I always preferred shade to the sun darkness to light
Daddy ' my mother asked 'arenâ??t we going to run out of gas?' No thereâ??s plenty of god-damned gas.' Where are we going?' Iâ??m going to get some god-damed oranges!
Everything was eternally dreary dismal damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy.
The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.
I like to prowl ordinary placesand taste the people-from a distance.
People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning - not many can do it.
...in that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back.
it is all ash and dry leaves and grief gone like an ocean liner.
Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know.
When I'm drinking around people I tend to get silly or pugnacious or wild which can cause problems.
Long before I became 'rich and famous' I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls.
There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.
the masses are everywhere they know how to do things: they have sane and deadly angers for sane and deadly things.
we know God is dead they've told us but listening to you I wasn't sure.
I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night ... that's when you pull the tricks ... magic.
human relationships simply aren't durable. I think back to the women in my life. they seem non-existent.
Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them: like you they have not escaped.
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.
Dying in a a war never stopped wars from happening.
It's just that the grape has me down.
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
Do you hate people? I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.
Some people like what you do some people hate what you do but most people simply don't give a damn.
I stopped looking for a Dream Girl I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare.
I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink I was lazy I didn't have a god politics ideas ideals.
A day of minor profit or prophet led to a night of drunkenness.
First paycheck I get I thought I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.
When you drank the world was still out there but for the moment it didnâ??t have you by the throat.
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.
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.
I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.
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.
And don't forget: time is meant to be wasted love fails and death is useless.
Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.
people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.
I am a series of small victories and large defeats.
There's music in everything even defeat
there's no defense except all the errors made
Each man's hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face.
The writing's easy it's the living that is sometimes difficult.
Weâ??ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.
Let' em learn or let' em die
young or old good or bad I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer.
Intellectuals say simple things in difficult ways. Artists say difficult things in simple ways.
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.
An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way
People in love often become edgy dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.
Why do you insist upon destroying yourself?
You were destroyed by what you befriended.
What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.
Itâ??s so easy to be easyâ??if you let it.
A pro does as well as he can within whathe has set out to doand a madmandoes exceptionally well at whathe can't helpdoing.
New Year's Eve always terrifies me.
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.
nobody ever finds the one
I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.
my greatest problem was stamps envelopes paper and wine with the world on the edge of World War II.
That's the way it ends. The thin edge of the wedge.
Sometimes I get too exhausted to even feel bad
Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.
We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
Four days alone with nothing. Emerge empowered. The first human face you see will knock you back 50%.
Erections Ejaculations Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness.
Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.
eleven months. now she's gone gone as they go.
A love like that was a serious illness an illness from which you never entirely recover.
like the fox I run with the hunted and if Iâ??m not the happiest man on earth Iâ??m surely the luckiest man alive.
when the phone rings I too would like to hear words that might ease some of this.
too often the only escape is sleep
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.
Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.
you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.
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.
Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.
Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge.
I walk into the kitchen look at the typer down there on the floor. It's a dirty floor. It's a dirty typer that types dirty stories
You've got to rise from the floor alone or fall back alone.
Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.
A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.
people run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.
When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune you can float him down the river with the turds.
Dying should come easy: like a freight train you don't hear when your back is turned.
I had no Freedom. I had nothing.
The free soul is rare but you know it when you see it
That's what friendship is sharing the prejudice of experience.
I am too sick to lay down the sidewalks frighten me the whole damned city frightens me what I will become what I have become frightens me.
they thought I had guts they were wrong I was only frightened of more important things
And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul and what was left of mine I wanted to keep.
I feel strangely normal.