To Be Young Is The Only Religion.

There Is Nothing As Boring As The Truth.

All Our Days Are Marked With/ Unexpected/ Affronts--some/ Disastrous, Others/ Less So/ But The Process Is/ Wearing And/ Continuous./ Attrition Rules./ Most Give/ Way/ Leaving/ Empty Spaces/ Where People Should/ Be.

The Problem Was You Had To Keep Choosing Between One Evil Or Another, And No Matter What You Chose, They Sliced A Little More Off You, Until There Was Nothing Left. At The Age Of 25 Most People Were Finished. A Whole Goddamned Nation Of Assholes Driving Automobiles, Eating, Having Babies, Doing Everything In The Worst Way Possible, Like Voting For The Presidential Candidate Who Reminded Them Most Of Themselves.

I Remembered My New Orleans Days, Living On Two Five-cent Candy Bars A Day For Weeks At A Time In Order To Have Leisure To Write. But Starvation, Unfortunately, Didn't Improve Art. It Only Hindered It. A Man's Soul Was Rooted In His Stomach. A Man Could Write Much Better After Eating A Porterhouse Steak And Drinking A Pint Of Whiskey Than He Could Ever Write After Eating A Nickel Candy Bar. The Myth Of The Starving Artist Was A Hoax.

There Was Something About That City, Though It Didn't Let Me Feel Guilty That I Had No Feeling For The Things So Many Others Needed. It Let Me Alone. Sitting Up In My Bed The Lights Out, Hearing The Outside Sounds, Lifting My Cheap Bottle Of Wine, Letting The Warmth Of The Grape Enter Me As I Heard The Rats Moving About The Room, I Preferred Them To Humans. Being Lost, Being Crazy Maybe Is Not So Bad If You Can Be That Way Undisturbed. New Orleans Gave Me That. Nobody Ever Called My Name.