“and so it came to pass that i was strapped to a gurney and covered in raw liver and slabs of beef that very quickly turned rancid under the bright spotlights. there exists a videotape somewhere that documents me being wheeled about the dance floor by two burly "orderlies," while i desperately search for a bathroom big enough to accommodate the stretcher so i can do a bump of cocaine. watching me retch from the decomposing meat, and simultaneously fiend for drugs, makes for an entertaining time, indeed.when i told my mother the extremes i went to in order to make a living, she just shook her head and said, "now don't you wish you'd finished college, dear?"mothers are so wise, sometimes.”

“I was so scared it was all going to be gone by the time I got there. Ninth grade, tenth grade - can't this thing go any faster?In the magazine, there were funny people with funny names like John Sex, who had wild white hair and a snake!-and didn't that just open up a kaleidoscope of new possibilities?And how long the years are-endless! And the minutae of your daily life! So tedious, when there are BIG THINGS happening a thousand miles away. And when you go to bed at night, it's hard to believe those people, those fabulous, daunting people, are out there right now!So we wait, and we endure, and someday we will be there, and we will make it.”

“Drug addicts are so funny that way. Just spinning around, lost in their own little world. Doing so much, accomplishing so little. How sad.”

“When my son, Jack, was four, I had to make a trip to Los Angeles. I asked him if he was going to miss me. 'Not so much,' Jack told me. 'You're not going to miss me?' I said. Jack shook his head, and he said, 'Love means you can never be apart.”

“I keep a band of music in my ante-room," he said once to her. "It has orders to play without stopping; it renders me two excellent services. It keeps the sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and it makes the world think that dancing's going on within.”

“I watched you while you were sleeping and you looked completely at peace. I wish I could feel that. I wish I could close my eyes and feel at peace. But I can't. I can't feel anything if I'm not with you, and even then all I can do is want something that I don't think I can ever have, at least not now. so I left this, and my peace, with you. Stark.”

“No, Michael, I do not trust you on a boat, I do not trust you on a goat. I do not trust you here. I do not trust you there. I do not trust you anywhere.”