“And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.”

“For people never say anything the same way twice; no two of them ever say it the same. The greatest imaginative writer that ever brooded in a lavender robe and a mellowed briar in his teeth, couldn't tell you, though e try for a lifetime, how the simplest strap-hanger will ask the conductor to be let off at the next stop. ...It is all for the taking. All the manuals by frustrated fictioneers on how to write can't give you the first syllable of reality, at any cot, that any common conversation can. All the classics, read and re-read, can't help you catch the ring of truth as does the word heard first-hand.”

“If Jesus Christ treated me like you do, I’d drive in the nails myself.”

“Heroin got the drive awright-but there’s not a tingle to a ton-you got to get M to get the tingle-tingle.”

“Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.”

“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

“... Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.”