"I had also read somewhere that if a man didn't truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job"
"It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you."
"I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you."
"To think, somebody had suicided for that."
"I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get."
"What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability."
"I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely."
"When I get down to my last dime I'll just walk over to skid row.""There are some real weirdos down there.""They're everywhere."
"I didn't know if I was unhappy. I felt too miserable to be unhappy."
"If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice."
"Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence."
"since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light"
"I was like a turd that drew flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired. I wanted to live alone,I felt best being alone, cleaner,,,"
"Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another."
"First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library."
"I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them."
"The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing."