“Sweet Christ, you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born.”

“she knew what she wanted and it wasn't / me. / I know more women like that than any / other kind.”

“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.”

“each man must realizethat it can all disappear veryquickly:the cat, the woman, the job,the front tire,the bed, the walls, theroom; all our necessitiesincluding love,rest on foundations of sand —and any given cause,no matter how unrelated:the death of a boy in Hong Kongor a blizzard in Omaha . . .can serve as your undoing.all your chinaware crashing to thekitchen floor, your girl will enterand you'll be standing, drunk,in the center of it and she'll ask:my god, what's the matter?and you'll answer: I don't know,I don't know . . .— PULL A STRING, A PUPPET MOVES . . .”

“A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class”

“It's all overrated, man. Sex is only a great thing if you're not getting any.”

“Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.”