That’s how it is with books, isn’t it: They’re not in a hurry. They’ll wait for you till you’re ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill.
A spark can set a whole forest on fire. Just a spark. Save it.
Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.
Four days alone with nothing. Emerge empowered. The first human face you see will knock you back 50%.
Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line.
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.
They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them.
I don’t know if this is true to you but for me sometimes it gets so bad that anything else say like looking at a bird on an overhead power line seems as great as a Beethoven symphony. then you forget it and you’re back again.
I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.
I am for the small man who has not forgotten, for the man who loves his beer and his women and his sunlight.
I’ve found out why men sign their names to their works- not that they created them but more than the others did not.
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.
Death meant little to me. It was the last joke in a series of bad jokes.
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.
People just weren’t interesting. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn’t understand it.
People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.
I hid in bars, because I didn’t want to hide in factories.
There is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff’s edge.
Long before I became ‘rich and famous’ I just sat round drinking wine and staring at the walls.
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.