“True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.”

“I don't know if this is true to you but for mesometimes it gets so badthat anything elsesay likelooking at a bird on an overheadpower lineseems as great as a Beethoven symphony.then you forget it and you're backagain.”

“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”

“They have no idea that it can be done by a bus driver, a field hand, or a fry cook. They have no idea where it comes from. It comes from pain, damnation and impossibility. The blow to the soul of the gut. It comes from getting burned and seared and slugged. It comes from...new and awful places and the same old places.”

“Somebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You "don't try". That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it.”

“Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe if you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn't become so obvious yourself.”

“I had decided against religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of people, or it drew fools. And if it weren't true, the fools were all the more foolish.What I need is a good doctor, I thought.You either lived or died.”