“I'll use the knives for spreading jam, and the gas to warmmy greying love.”

“Daddy,' my mother asked, 'aren’t we going to run out of gas?'No there’s plenty of god-damned gas.'Where are we going?'I’m going to get some god-damed oranges!”

“I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time.”

“and you go on toward your ocean, the cigar biting your lips the way love used to.”

“when I was a boy I used to dream of becomingthe village idiot.I used to lie in bed and imagine myself thehappy idiotable to get food easily...and easy sympathy,a planned confusion of not too much love or effort.some would claim that I have succeeded.”

“soon I'll finish this 5th ofPuerto Rican rum.in the morning I'll vomit andshower, drive backin, have a sandwich by 1 p.m.,be back in my room by2,stretched on the bed,waiting for the phone to ring,not answering,my holiday is anevasion, mt reasoningis not.”

“There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D.H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D.H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G.B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless.”