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I can’t believe that he is not in the other room or around the corner or alive someplace tonight and he is of course as I am taken by the sound of him and little goosebumps run along both of my arms then a chill he’s here now.
when Wagner was an old man a birthday party was given in his honor and a couple of youthful incidental compositions were played. afterwards he asked, “who wrote those?” “you did,” he was told. “ah,” he responded, “it’s as I have always suspected: death then does have some virtue.”
great books are the ones we need.
it’s a real good world up there: well-earned, self-sufficient and hardly dependent upon the variables.
there’s all that time to eat drink and wait on death like everybody else.
the light changes and we escape, forward.
of course, I may die in the next ten minutes and I’m ready for that but what I’m really worried about is that my editor-publisher might retire even though he is ten years younger than I.
if you’re going to create you’re going to create whether you work 16 hours a day in a coal mine or you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children while you’re on welfare, you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown away, you’re going to create blind crippled demented, you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your back while the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment, flood and fire.
I turned the radio on. I was 18 miles past my destination but it didn’t matter. it was a beautiful sunny day.
I’ve known you for 6 months but I have no idea who you are.
thinking those men were all children once what has happened to them? and what has happened to me?
“you ready for a big day?” she asked. “I’m ready for any kind of day.”
he wears everybody out but himself.
I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.
I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things ever splendid
there will be no rest even in our dreams.
now, all there is to do is reset broken moments.
people are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice…
you don’t have to go to the movies to see a horror show.
not writing is not good but trying to write when you can’t is worse.
“you’ll write again,” people assure me, “you’ll be better than ever.” that’s nice to know. but the typewriter is silent and it looks at me.
from my bed I watch 3 birds on a telephone wire. one flies off. then another. one is left, then it too is gone. my typewriter is tombstone still. and I am reduced to bird watching. just thought I’d let you know, fucker.
I sit in bed and wait for the whole thing to go one way or the other. just like everybody else.
I’m lucky in a hundred different ways. sometimes at night in bed at one or two a.m. I will think about how lucky I am and it keeps me awake.
by writing things down I have been better able to live with them.
yet look, I am still lucky, for writing about a writer’s block is better than not writing at all.
he paused. “go on,” I say. “all right, let’s say there are 4 types of cancer—A, B, C, D. well, you’ve got D. and if I had cancer I’d rather have your kind: D.” the doctor is in a tough business but the pay is good.
like when you walk outside be glad your car might possibly be there and if it is— that the tires aren’t flat then you get in and if it starts—you start.
I push open the wooden wall and enter, ready and not ready enough.
they didn’t want to write they wanted to succeed at writing.
some people grind away making their unhappiness the ultimate factor of their existence until finally they are just automatically unhappy,
the mountains call us home.
after 50 years in the game I had finally thanked my typewriter.
into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
drunks are never forgiven. but drunks will forgive themselves because they need to drink again.
he was married longer than most men live. he still is only she doesn’t know she’s married.
I can’t read a note of music. But I have found a part of the world like no other part of the world. it gave heart to my life, helped me get to here.
such people think success grows on trees. you and I, we know better.
I read F. D.’s Notes from the Underground in a small El Paso library after sleeping the night on a park bench during a sand storm. after reading that book I knew I had a long way to go as a writer.
