"The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative."

From Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews & Encounters 1963-1993, 2003

"The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape." 

From Ham on Rye. 

"failure was nothing but a trick to keep us going, and fame and love a trick to dull our bleeding. and as fire becomes ash and steel becomes rust, we become wise and then not so wise." 

From the poem "A Trick to Dull Our Bleeding" appearing in The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966.

"I was still naked. I looked down at my penis: you dirty son-of-a-bitch! Do you know all the heartache you cause with your dumb hunger?"

Another comedic gem from Women.

"And yet women--good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep."

From Women [his third novel].

"The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding otu with a tommy-gun."

From Ham on Rye [his fourth novel].

"return the next morning to punch in knowing we were suckers making the rich richer . . .we were some gang in that death ballet, we were magnificent we gave them better than they asked, yet, we gave them nothing."

From the poem, "SPARKS" appearing in the 1983 New Year's Greeting From Black Sparrow Press.