Poor blacks hated. Poor whites hated. It was only when blacks got money and whites got money that they mixed.
That is the one weakness that has led me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta.
Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love.
On such jobs men become tired. They experience a weariness beyond fatigue. They say mad, brilliant things. Out of my head, I cussed and talked and cracked jokes and sang. Hell boils with laughter.
Kindness came finally to the better ones. There was less self-interest. Less fear. Less competitive gamesmanship.
You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by.
The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they slice a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left.
There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people. Maybe I’d become a monk. I’d pretend to believe in God and live in a cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine.
All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was always controlling who got a chance and who didn’t.
Gathered around me were the weak instead of the strong, the ugly instead of the beautiful, the losers instead of the winners. It looked like it was my destiny to travel in their company through life.
You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn’t deceive anybody. It’s the deceivers who make you feel bad.
So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.
I liked to watch the fights. Somehow it reminded me of writing. You needed the same thing, talent, guts and condition.
Every writer thinks he’s a good one.
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.
I have two rules. One is, never trust a man who smokes a pipe. The other is, never trust a man with shiny shoes.