“I'm going, she said. I love you but you'recrazy, you're doomed.”

“sometimes I hate you," she said.”

“I climbed the stairway (there was no elevator) and put the key in. The door swung open. Somebody had changed all the furniture around, put in a new rug. No, the furniture was new, too. There was a woman on the couch. She looked all right. Young. Good legs. Blonde. 'Hello,' I said, 'care for a beer?' 'Hi!' she said. 'All right, I'll have one.' 'I like the way this place is fixed up,' I told her. 'I did it myself.' 'But why?' 'I just felt like it,' she said. We each drank at the beer. 'You're all right,' I said. I put my beercan down and gave her a kiss. I put my hand on one of her knees. It was a nice knee. Then I had another swallow of beer. 'Yes,' I said, 'I really like the way this place looks. It's really going to lift my spirits.' 'That's nice. My husband likes it too.' 'Now why would your husband...What? Your husband? Look, what's this apartment number?' '309.' '309? Great Christ! I'm on the wrong floor! I live in 409.”

“Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.”

“You just rebel against everything. How are you going to survive?I don't know. I'm already tired.”

“you son of a bitch, she said, I amtrying to build a meaningfulrelationship.you can't build it with a hammer,he said.”

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get outbut I'm too tough for him,I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.”