"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting"

"I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one."

"I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love."

"And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep."

"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."

"I'm going, she said. I love you but you're crazy, you're doomed."

"I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go."

"Love is all right 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."

"You son of a bitch, she said, I am trying to build a meaningful relationship. you can't build it with a hammer, he said."

"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."

"Anything is a waste of time unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming toward a kind of phantom-love-happiness."

"It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the "real" meaning of the sun"

"Each man's hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face."

"She is no longer the beautiful woman she was. she sends photos of herself sitting upon a rock by the ocean alone and damned. I could have had her once. I wonder if she thinks I could have saved her?"

"The trouble with a mask is it never changes"

"In the morning it was morning and I was still alive."

"If you get married they think you're finished and if you are without a woman they think you're incomplete."

"We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."

"The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race. There, I feel better."

"I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard."

"The tigers have found me and I do not care."

"‎"she’ mad but she’ magic. there’ no lie in her fire."

"I said goodbye again sucking up all that was left of her into the little that was left of me. I said, 'don't look for me again. fuck it. we are all lost. goodbye, goodbye."

"So it's always a process of letting go, one way or another"

"Nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing."

""People "run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water."

"In this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck"

"Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers."

"Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else."

"Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline."

"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."

"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."

"Nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it."

"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?"

"One can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid"

"To fight for each minute is to fight for what is possible within yourself, so that your life and your death will not be like theirs."

"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."

"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 had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely."

"Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass."

"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."

"It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there."

"It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it."

"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."

"The more crap you believe, the better off you are."

"The best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them"

"It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you."

"If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week."

"A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life."

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."