“Lighting new cigarettes,pouring moredrinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Stillis.”

“the psyche has been burnedand left us senseless,the world has been darker than lights-outin a closet full of hungry bats,and the whiskey and wine entered our veinswhen blood was too weak to carry on”

“But my whole life has been a matter of fighting for one simple hour to do what I want to do. There was always something getting in the way of my getting to myself.”

“I was only kidding about the hundred," she says.oh," I say, "what will it cost me?"she lights her cigarette withmy lighter and looks at methrough the flame:her eyes tell me.look," I say, "I don't think Ican ever pay that price again.”

“Writing was never work for me. It had been the same for as long as I could remember: turn on the radio to a classical music station, light a cigarette or a cigar, open the bottle. The typer did the rest. All I had to do was be there. The whole process allowed me to continue when life itself offered very little, when life itself was a horror show. There was always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.”

“There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.”

“Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman.”