“Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.”

“Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don’t give a damn.”

“in this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck”

“Christmas poem to a man in jailhello Bill Abbott:I appreciate your passing around my books injail there, my poems and stories.if I can lighten the load for some of those guys withmy books, fine.but literature, you know, is difficult for theaverage man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too);I don't like most poetry, for example,so I write mine the way I like to read it.”

“I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax.”

“writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all”

“Some people have written that my writing has helped them go on.It has helped me too. The writing, the roses, the 9 cats.”