''You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.''
''“My dear, Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover. ~ Falsely yours” ''
''“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didnt have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didnt make for an interesting person. I didnt want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.” ''
''“the tigers have found me and I do not care.” ''
''“one can never be sure whether its good poetry or bad acid” ''
''“Some lose all mind and become soul,insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. some lose both and become accepted” ''
''“It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun” ''
''“there is a place in the heart that will never be filled a space and even during the best moments and the greatest times times we will know it we will know it more than ever there is a place in the heart that will never be filled and we will wait and wait in that space.” ''
''“animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe thats why we get along” ''
''“The more crap you believe, the better off you are.” ''
''“If youre losing your soul and you know it, then youve still got a soul left to lose” ''
''“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” ''
''“I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.” ''
''“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.”''
''“Theres a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but Im too tough for him, I say, stay in there, Im not going to let anybody see you.” ''
''“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”''
''“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”''
''“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.” ''
''“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”''
''“Baby," I said, "Im a genius but nobody knows it but me.” ''
''“Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.” ''
''“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, Im not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times youve felt that way.” ''
''“unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, dont do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, dont do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.” ''
''“so its always a process of letting go, one way or another” ''
''In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.''
''“The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.” ''
''“she was consumed by 3 simple things: drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more: youth and beauty” ''
''“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.” ''
''“my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.”''
''“If youre going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, dont even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, youll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If youre 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. Its the only good fight there is.” ''
''“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.” ''
''“People empty me. I have to get away to refill.” ''
''“if you get married they think youre finished and if you are without a woman they think youre incomplete.” ''
''“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.” ''
''“Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.” ''
''“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.” ''
''“those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.” ''
''“I wasnt much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.” ''
''“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”''
''“My ambition is handicapped by laziness” ''
''“You have to die a few times before you can really live.” ''
''“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” ''
''“unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, dont do it” ''
''“Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.” ''
''“there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy” ''
''“I wanted the whole world or nothing.”''
''“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.” ''
''“We are Born like this Into this Into these carefully mad wars Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness Into bars where people no longer speak to each other Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings Born into this Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes” ''
''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.''
''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.''
''“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who cant readily accept the God formula, the big answers dont remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ''
''“Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.” ''
''A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.” ''
''“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.” ''
''“Thats the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.''
''“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”''
''“great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. if you read this after I am dead it means I made it.”''
''“It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasnt always there.” ''
''“"she’ mad but she’ magic. there’ no lie in her fire.” ''
''“Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.”''
''“there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do its too late and theres nothing worse than too late” ''
''“I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasnt a nightmare.” ''
''“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you cant feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.” ''
''“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.” ''
''“each mans hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face.” ''
''“Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. Its real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like youve suddenly become an idiot. Theres no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.” ''
''“Do you hate people?” “I dont hate them...I just feel better when theyre not around.” ''
''“Of course its possible to love a human being if you dont know them too well.”''
''“I will remember the kisses our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.” ''
''“Were all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesnt. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” ''
''“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.” ''
''“purple does something strange to me” ''
''“I didnt have any friends at school, didnt want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me.” ''
''“What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.” ''
''“He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "its simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.” ''
''If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.''
''“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. people so tired mutilated either by love or no love. people just are not good to each other one on one. the rich are not good to the rich the poor are not good to the poor. we are afraid. our educational system tells us that we can all be big-ass winners. it hasnt told us about the gutters or the suicides. or the terror of one person aching in one place alone untouched unspoken to watering a plant.” ''
''“I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.” ''
''“Lifes as kind as you let it be.”''
''“The crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh.” ''
''“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where youre allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. Its like killing yourself, and then youre reborn. I guess Ive lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.” ''
''“Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we cant even cry.” ''
''“Its better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.” ''
''“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.” ''
''“Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don’t give a damn.” ''
''“There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.” ''
''“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” ''
''“i was born to hustle roses down the avenue of the dead.” ''
