“you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punchthe radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehowget through the slow days and the busy days and the dulldays and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightfuland so disappointing becausewe are all so alike and so different.”

“All our days are marked with/unexpected/affronts--some/disastrous, others/less so/but the process is/wearing and/continuous./Attrition rules./Most give/way/leaving/empty spaces/where people should/be.”

“And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher.”

“There is nothing that teaches you more than regroupingafter failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken withfear. They fear failure so much that they fail. They are tooconditioned, too used to being told what to do. It begins withthe family, runs through school and goes into the businessworld.”

“A worthwhile day, I had killed two spiders, I had upset the balance of nature - now we would all be eaten up by the bugs and the flies.”

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”

“nothing's news.it's the same old thing indisguise.only one thing comes without adisguise and you only see itonce, ormaybe never.like getting hit by a freighttrain.makes us realize that all ourmoaning about long lost girlsin gingham dressesis not so importantafterall.”