Burn all the maps to your body. I'm not here of my own choosing.

He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.

Messy, isn't it?

Our names were made for us in another century.

We looked like a parade barely moving toward YOU MIGHT GET LOST.

For fear you will be alone you do so many things that aren’t you at all.

The thought of her hands touching his hair makes me want to vomit.

God-forsaken is beautiful, too.

Somebody should have taken him to a stationary store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore.

The smallest snowstorm on record took place an hour ago in my back yard. It was approximately two flakes. I waited for more to fall, but that was it. The entire storm was two flakes.

Someday Time will die, and Love will bury it

You've got some 'Star-Spangled' nails in your coffin, kid. That's what they've done for you, son.

Just because people love your mind, doesn't mean they have to have your body, too

There are spiders living comfortably in my house while the wind howls outside. They aren't bothering anybody. If I were a fly, I'd have second thoughts, but I'm not, so I don't.

In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I will tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.

The bees in my stomach are dead and getting used to it.

There are not too many fables about man's misuse of sunflower seeds.

If I Should Die Before You Do When you wake up from death, you will find yourself in my arms, and I will be kissing you, and I will be crying.

The 1960s: A lot of people remember hating President Lyndon Baines Johnson and loving Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, depending on the point of view. God rest their souls.

The heart is something else. Nobody knows what's going to happen,' I said

In a Cafe" I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of bread as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking at the photograph of a dead lover.

He looked as if he had been beaten to death with a wine bottle, but by doing it with the contents of the bottle.

Everyone has a place in history. Mine is clouds.

It was not an outhouse resting upon the imagination. It was reality.

I daydream about a high school where everybody plays the harmonica: the students, the teachers, the principal, the janitor and the cook in the cafeteria.

Put the coffee on, bubbles, I'm coming home

She had a voice that made Pearl Harbor seem like a lullaby.

She wore a loose bathrobe that covered up a body that would have won first prize in a beauty contest for cement blocks.....She had a voice that made pearl harbour sound like a lullaby.

Watcha doin? If you're like me, you're doin nothin, but you're doin it so well that everybody thinks you're doin somethin.

The flies were teaching an advanced seminar in philosophy as they crawled up the crack of my ass

The only thing he likes better than a nice juicy homicide is a sirloin steak smothered with onions.

In Watermelon Sugar deeds were done

The old drunk told me about trout fishing. When he could talk, he had a way of describing trout as if they were a precious and intelligent metal.

USED TROUT STREAM FOR SALE. MUST BE SEEN TO BE APPRECIATED.

Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars.

He looked as if he'd got a lot of pleasure out of going ten rounds with your grandmother and making sure she went the whole distance.

When he said this, it was not a form of criticism. It was just a simple observation that led to another bite from the movie on his plate called The Old Man and the Stew.

There wasn't a single thing in there that reminded me of my existence.

One spring afternoon as a child in the strange town of Portland, I walked down to a different street corner, and saw a row of old houses, huddled together like seals on a rock.

I guess some people lived like Reader's Digest, but I hadn't met any and at that time it seemed doubtful that I ever would

Moonlight drifts from over A hundred thousand miles To fall upon a cemetery It reads a hundred epitaphs And then smiles at a nest of Baby owls

By the way, Doc Edwards said. How's that book coming along? Oh, it's coming along. Fine. What's it about? Just what I'm writing down: one word after another. Good.

THE NECESSITY OF APPEARING IN YOUR OWN FACE There are days when that is the last place in the world that you want to be but you have to be there, like a movie, because it -----features you.

Punitive ghosts like steam-driven tennis courts haunt the apples in my nonexistent orchard. I remember when there were just worms out there and they danced in moonlit cores on warm September nights.

I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise.

It's pretty hard to have faith when everybody is trying to lock you up.

Now it was close to sunset and the earth was beginning to cool off in the manner of eternity and office girls were returning like penguins from Montgomery Street.

Let us pretend that my mind is a taxi... and suddenly you are riding in it.

You're not fooling anyone by taking your clothes off when you go to bed.

I read the note and it did not please me and I threw it away, so not even time could find it.