If you let them kill you, they will.
If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.
And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life.
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
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.
Some nights I knew that if I slept I would die.
Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.
When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.
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.
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 so obvious yourself.
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?
I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.
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.
We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus!
Humanity, you never had it to begin with.
There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.
The Difference Between Art and Life is that Art is More Bearable.
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.
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.
If I hadn’t been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago.