“crawled like a blind slug into the web”

“I once lay in awhite hospitalfor the dying and the dyingself, where some god pissed a rain ofreason to make things growonly to die, where on my kneesI prayed for LIGHT,I prayed for l*i*g*h*t,and prayingcrawled like a blind slug into thewebwhere threads of wind stuck against my mindand I died of pityfor Man, for myself,on a cross without nails,watching in fear asthe pig belches in his sty, farts,blinks and eats.”

“terror finally becomes almost bearable but never quiteterror creeps like a cat crawls like a cat across my mind”

“I am this fiery snail crawling home.”

“They have no idea that it can be done by a bus driver, a field hand, or a fry cook. They have no idea where it comes from. It comes from pain, damnation and impossibility. The blow to the soul of the gut. It comes from getting burned and seared and slugged. It comes from...new and awful places and the same old places.”

“escape from the black widow spider is a miracle as great as art.what a web she can weave slowly drawing you to hershe'll embrace you then when she's satisfied she'll kill youstill in her embrace and suck the blood from you. ”

“how come you're so ugly?""my life has hardly been pretty — the hospitals, the jails, the jobs, the women, the drinking. some of my critics claim that i have deliberately inflicted myself with pain. i wish that some of my critics had been along with me for the journey. it’s true that i haven't always chosen easy situations but that's a hell of a long ways from saying that i leaped into the oven and locked the door. hangover, the electric needle, bad booze, bad women, madness in small rooms, starvation in the land of plenty, god knows how i got so ugly, i guess it just comes from being slugged and slugged again and again, and not going down, still trying to think, to feel, still trying to put the butterfly back together again…it’s written a map on my face that nobody would ever want to hang on their wall.sometimes i’ll see myself somewhere…suddenly…say in a large mirror in a supermarket…eyes like little mean bugs…face scarred, twisted, yes, i look insane, demented, what a mess…spilled vomit of skin…yet, when i see the “handsome” men i think, my god my god, i’m glad i’m not them”