Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions.

And it seems people should not build houses anymore it seems people should stop working and sit in small rooms on second floors under electric lights without shades; it seems there is a lot to forget and a lot not to do and in drugstores, markets, bars, the people are tired, they do not want to move, and I stand there at night and look through this house and the house does not want to be built.

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.

We are burning like a chicken wing left on the grill of an outdoor barbecue
we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted
we are
an unwanted
burning
as we sizzle and fry
to the bone
the coals of Dante's 'Inferno' spit and sputter beneath
us
and
above the sky is an open hand
and
the words of wise men are useless
it's not a nice world, a nice world it's
not .

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

Animals never worry about heaven or hell. Neither do I. Maybe that's why we get along.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

It's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

Life wore a man out, wore a man thin.
Tomorrow would be a better day.

I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.

I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age.

To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can't sit still, move, or even go decently insane.

If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.

A life can change in a tenth of a second or sometimes it can take 70 years.

I went home each night dizzy and sick. He was murdering me with the sound of his voice.

There are too many ways to drown even if you don't want to drown.

Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.