“I get 75 letters a month. If i answered them that's all I would ever do.”

“dear J: I feel lucky that I didn’t fuck you the first time we met in Houston, but luckier that I didn’t fuck you the last time we met in San Francisco. this is the answer to your letter even though I don’t know if you’ll ever read it. the words are yours but I’ll get credit for the poem. you see, it could never have worked, the way I am. B.”

“I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.”

“animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along”

“I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.”

“I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right…. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me.”

“The place trembled with sound. I didn't need to do anything. They would do it all. But you had to be careful. Drunk as they were they could immediately detect any false gesture, any false word. You could never underestimate an audience. They had paid to get in; they had paid for drinks; they intended to get something and if you didn't give it to them they'd run you right into the ocean.”