Quote collection
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"I seldom know what I'm going to write when I sit down. There isn't much agony and sweat of the human spirit involved in doing it. The writing's easy, it's the living that is sometimes difficult."
"A dry period for me means perhaps going two or three nights without writing. I probably have dry periods but I'm not aware of them and I go on writing, only the writing probably isn't much good."
"I guess for me Hemingway is a lot like it is for others: he goes down well when we are young."
"I don't carry notebooks and I don't consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I am pretty good at doing that. I don't like writers, but then I don't like insurance salesmen either."
"Homosexuals are delicate and bad poetry is delicate and [Allen] Ginsberg turned the tables by making homosexual poetry strong poetry, almost manly poetry; but in the long run, the homo will remain the homo and not the poet."
"I used to lay drunk in alleys and I probably will again.Bukowski, who is he? I read about Bukowski and it doesn't seem like anything to do with me."
"Figuring the average poet starts at 16, I am 23."
"The poet, as a rule, is a half-man - a sissy, not a real person, and he is in no shape to lead real men in matters of blood, or courage."
"Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . ."
"Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience."
"Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know."
"she is no longer the beautiful woman she was. she sends photos of herself sitting upon a rock by the ocean alone and damned. I could have had her once. I wonder if she thinks I could have saved her?"
"t was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn't much left you could depend on."