“we waste days like mad blackbirds and pray for alcoholic nightsour silk-sick human smiles wrap around us like somebody else's confetti”

“We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar.”

“God knows I am not too hippy. Perhaps because I am too much around the hip and I fear fads for, like anybody else, I like something that tends to last.”

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

“we had goldfish and they circled around and aroundin the bowl on the table near the heavy drapescovering the picture window and my mother, always smiling, wanting us allto be happy, told me, “be happy, Henry!” and she was right: it’s better to be happy if youcanbut my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while raging inside his 6-foot-2 frame because he couldn’t understand what was attacking him from within. my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!why don’t you ever smile?”and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw. one day the goldfish died, all five of them, they floated on the water, on their sides, theireyes still open,and when my father got home he threw them to the cat there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mothersmiled.A smile to remember”

“The war. Here I was a virgin. Could you imagine getting your ass blown off for the sake of history before you even knew what a woman was? Or owned an automobile? What would I be protecting? Somebody else. Somebody else who didn't give a shit about me. Dying in a war never stopped wars from happening.”

“we are a scene chalked out with the sick white brush of age”