“He looked as if he'd got a lot of pleasure out of going ten rounds with your grandmother and making sure she went the whole distance.”

“The truck looked just like a Civil War truck if they'd had trucks back in those times. But the truck ran, even though it didn't have a gas tank.There was an empty fifty-gallon gasoline drum on the bed of the truck with a smaller gasoline can on top of it, and there was a syphon leading from that can to the fuel line.It worked like this. Lee Mellon drove and I stayed on the back of the truck and made sure everything went all right with the syphon, that it didn't get knocked out of kilter by the motion of the truck.We looked kind of funny going down the highway. I'd never had the heart to ask Lee Mellon what happened to the gas tank. I figured it was best not to know.”

“My God, ma'am, you're so pretty I'd walk ten miles barefooted on a freezing morning to stand in your shit.”

“I will be very careful the next time I fall in love, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren't worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around the house that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it. She wanted her next lover to be a broom.”

“The Beautiful Poem"I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking about you.Pissing a few moments ago I looked down at my penisaffectionately.Knowing it has been inside you twice today makes mefeel beautiful.”

“...what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.”

“If you get hung up on everybody else's hang-ups, then the whole world's going to be nothing more than one huge gallows.”