To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.
Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lays a living hell.
The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.
Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.
Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, 'Don't try.' That fits the writing, too. I don't try; I just type.
I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.
You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out.
Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.
When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don't mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It's the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.
If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.
A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go.
I am a dangerous man when turned loose with a typewriter.
Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master... it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.
Never get out of bed before noon.
We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.
Much publishing is done through politics, friends, and natural stupidity.
When I write, when I'm going hot, I don't want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you're pushing it.
There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.
