How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: An Autobiography

by Lenny Bruce

Prostitution wasn’t respected and accepted, but I figured that if she was the town whore, then all the people in the town had fucked her and had paid her and they were all a part of what she was. I staunchly defended Carmelo’s mother.

I knew they were tired after working a long day, but I couldn’t understand why anyone who could, wouldn’t want to sleep in another person’s arms.

Lonesome people are a vast neglected segment of that mythical American Public the advertising men are always talking about. One mustn’t assume that all lonesome people are pensioners, old maids and physically handicapped shut-ins. There are lonesome young men who sit in the Greyhound Bus Station and there are secretaries who live in immaculate apartments that they wouldn’t mind having messed up by some guy who doesn’t hang up his clothes.

I loved this because I wasn’t as afraid of being killed in battle as I was of being bored.

There’s nothing sadder than an old hipster.

After all, what’s the sense of sending a heroin addict to a hospital for intensified therapy and perhaps curing him in three years, when you can have him in and out of jail three times over a period of ten years? Then, the last time, you’ve got him for good!

subjective. After we resolved our conflict with the villainous English, the Indians were next. They had some absurd notion that since they were here before us, they had some claim upon the land.

Marilyn’s respectability when she died was based principally upon her economic status, which is, in the final analysis, the only type our society really respects.

all so-called “men of God” are self-ordained. The “calling” they hear is just their own echo.

The Daughters of the American Revolution have supplied enough status and respect due to people for such an honorable heritage; well, some of the Negroes now serving time in jail for the terrible offense of wanting to sit at lunch counters are sixth-generation Americans, too.

I did not doubt for a moment then that if Christ were to come down at that moment, he would go immediately to headquarters and ask the Pope, “What are you doing wearing that big ring? What are those gold cups encrusted with diamonds and other jewels for? Don’t you know that people are starving all over the world? At this very moment a poor pregnant Negress is standing with swollen ankles in the back of a bus in Biloxi.”

I knew in my heart by pure logic that any man who calls himself a religious leader and owns more than one suit is a hustler as long as there is someone in the world who has no suit at all.

What happens to sweet, willing young boys? What happens to all of us? We never stop anymore and say, “Can I help you, mister?”

All alone. All alone. Oh, what joy to be all alone. I’m happy alone, don’t you see. I’ve convinced you, now how about me? All alone.

“Mr. Bruce expresses relief at what he sees as a trend of ‘people leaving the church and going back to God,’

Obscenity is a human manifestation.

Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will some day become Congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.

Police brutality. Think about it. Think about the time it happened to you. If your frame of reference is the South, that’s not police brutality, it’s Southern revolution. That’s a separate country down there.

“Ladies and gentlemen, is that the kind of man you want for United States Senator? No! We’re looking for a religious man—one who’d see to it that anyone that had sinned would be made to suffer forever . . .”

Someone goes to jail, and after 15 years of incarceration, you make sure you get him back in as soon as you can by shaming anyone who would forgive him, accept him, give him employment; by shaming them on television—“The unions knowingly hired ex-convicts.”