"I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real."

"Turn the goddam music up! My heart feels like an alligator!"

"On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need."

"Poor bastard. Wait 'till he sees the bats."

"If you can't make yourself understood by your friends, you'll be in trouble when your enemies come for you."

"I'm a relatively respectable citizen. Multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous."

"I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time."

"Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing."

"Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed."

"To make a point of declaring friendship is to cheapen it. For men's emotions are very rarely put into words successfully."

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."

"Pray to God, but row away from the rocks."

"No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted."

"Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."

"You can't miss what you never had."

"Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent."

"There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached."

"In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely."

"Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested."

"It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids."

"On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."

"A word to the wise is infuriating."

"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."

"I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me."