“I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.”

“I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.”

“Zircoff," I said, "put the tomatoes away." "Piss," he said, "I wish they were hand grenades.”

“I wish I were driving a blue 1952 Buickor a dark blue 1942 Buickor a blue 1932 Buickover a cliff of hell and into thesea.”

“I suppose like othersI have come through fire and sword,love gone wrong,head-on crashes, drunk at sea,and I have listened to the simple sound of water runningin tubsand wished to drown”

“the last cigarettes are smoked, the loaves are sliced,and lest this be taken for wry sorrow,drown the spider in wine.you are much more than simply dead:I am a dish for your ashes,I am a fist for your vanished air.the most terrible thing about lifeis finding it gone.”

“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”