No matter what you’re going through there’s no pit so deep that God can’t reach in and get you out.

After dinner or lunch or whatever it was — with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what — I said, “Look, baby, I’m sorry, but don’t you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let’s give it up. Let’s just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let’s go to the zoo. Let’s look at animals. Let’s drive down and look at the ocean. It’s only 45 minutes. Let’s play games in the arcades. Let’s go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let’s have friends. Let’s laugh. This kind of life like everybody else’s kind of life: it’s killing us.”

Sleeping is nice. You forget about everything for a little while.

The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.

the best part was
pulling down the
shades
stuffing the doorbell
with rags
putting the phone
in the
refrigerator
and going to bed
for 3 or 4
days.
and the next best
part
was
nobody ever
missed
me.

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.

let’s let the bombs go
I’m tired of waiting

I’ve put away my toys
folded the road maps
canceled my subscription to Time
kissed Disneyland goodbye

I’ve taken the flea collars off my cats
unplugged the tv
I no longer dream of pink flamingoes
I no longer check the market index

let’s let ’em go
let’s let ’em blow

I’m tired of waiting

I don’t like this kind of blackmail
I don’t like governments playing cutesy with my life:
either crap or get off the pot
I’m tired of waiting
I’m tired of dangling
I’m tired of the fix

let the bombs blow

you cheap sniveling cowardly nations
you mindless giants

do it
do it
do it!

and escape to your planets and space stations
then you can fuck it
up there too.

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. Nobody would fuck with me. I could go into a cell for months of meditation where I wouldn’t have to look at anybody and they could just send in the wine.

Fantasy, if it’s really convincing, can’t become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time.

Alaska pulling the controller up and to the right, as if that would help her escape certain death. I had the same bad habit.

I didn’t hate ANY of that. When I was with Haru, I didn’t feel any agony.

I just… Needed to get outside of that place. I’ve been a little exhausted by it all. ‘I just wanted a little escape.’ I didn’t

And so, now, it is almost midnight of the first day, and I have broken my resolution to go to bed early – postponing sleep, and thereby the inevitable waking up in tomorrow. Another device of escape.

Shawn Boswell: So, how did you end up over here, anyway?
Han: Well, you know those old Westerns where the cowboys make a run for the border? This is my Mexico.

Shawn Boswell: What the?
Han: Police cars here are only factory tuned. If you can do better than 180K, they can’t catch you. So they don’t even try.
Shawn Boswell: You know what? I’m beginning to like this country already.

on the continent

I’m soft. I
dream too.
I let myself dream. I dream of
being famous. I dream of
walking the streets of London and
Paris. I dream of
sitting in cafes
drinking fine wines and
taking a taxi back to a good
hotel.
I dream of
meeting beautiful ladies in the hall
and
turning them away because
I have a sonnet in mind
that I want to write
before sunrise. at sunrise
I will be asleep and there will be a
strange cat curled up on the
windowsill.

I think we all feel like this
now and then.
I’d even like to visit
Andernach, Germany, the place where
I began, then I’d like to
fly on to Moscow to check out
their mass transit system so
I’d have something faintly lewd to
whisper into the ear of the mayor of
Los Angeles upon to my return to this
fucking place.

it could happen.
I’m ready.
I’ve watched snails crawl over
ten foot walls
and vanish.

you mustn’t confuse this with
ambition.
I would be able to laugh at my
good turn of the cards –

and I won’t forget you.
I’ll send postcards and
snapshots, and the
finished sonnet.

I don’t want no handouts. I want to get it out the mud.

Elena Neves: Run, before it’s too late. Leave Rio. You can be free.
Dom: Running ain’t freedom. You should know that.

and each temporary escape
has a permanent price.
neither drink nor love
will
see you through.

And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I’ve got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. 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 out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn’t even get a job as a dishwasher.

And then along came Hemingway. What a thrill! He knew how to lay down a line. 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.

Then I take a dump. Feel better. Take off my clothes and step into the pool. Ice water. But great. I walk along toward the deep end of the pool, the water rising inch by inch, chilling me. Then I plunge below the water. It’s restful. The world doesn’t know where I am. I come up, swim to the far edge, find the ledge, sit there. It must be about the 9th or 10th race. The horses are still running. I plunge again into the water, being aware of my stupid whiteness, of my age hanging onto me like a leech. Still, it’s OK. I should have been dead 40 years ago. I rise to the top, swim to the far edge, get out.

That’s how they hooked you — they gave you just enough to keep alive but they never gave you enough so you could finally escape.

Of course, you leave afterwards or get very drunk which is the same thing.

I wish I were driving a blue 1952 Buick
or a dark blue 1942 Buick
or a blue 1932 Buick
over a cliff of hell and into the
sea.

the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.

The Wine of Forever.

As a very young man I divided an equal amount of time between the bars and the libraries; how I managed to provide for my other ordinary needs is the puzzle; well, I simply didn’t bother too much with that — if I had a book or a drink then I didn’t think too much of other things — fools create their own paradise.

But you know, my former life as a bibliophile, it possibly kept me from murdering somebody, myself included. It kept me from being an industrialist. It allowed me to endure some women that most men would never be able to live with. It gave me space, a pause. It helped me to write this.

I’ve never been lonely. I’ve been in a room — I’ve felt suicidal. I’ve been depressed. I’ve felt awful — awful beyond all — but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me…or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I’ve never been bothered with because I’ve always had this terrible itch for solitude. It’s being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I’ll quote Ibsen, “The strongest men are the most alone.” I’ve never thought, “Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I’ll feel good.” No, that won’t help. You know the typical crowd, “Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?” Well, yeah. Because there’s nothing out there. It’s stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn’t want to hide in factories. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have. Let’s drink more wine!

To ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you: something else is hurting you — that’s why you need pot, or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can’t think. Or madhouses or mechanical cunts or 162 baseball games in a season. Or Vietnam or Israel or the fear of spiders.

soon I’ll finish this 5th of
Puerto Rican rum.
in the morning I’ll vomit and
shower, drive back
in, have a sandwich by 1 p.m.,
be back in my room by
2,
stretched on the bed,
waiting for the phone to ring,
not answering,
my holiday is an
evasion, mt reasoning
is not.

The ‘67 model was the last good Volks — and the young men knew it. “Hepburn, they stole our fucking car.”
“Oh Hank, surely not!”
“It’s gone. It was sitting there.” I pointed. “Now it’s gone.”
“Hank, what will we do?”
“We’ll take a taxi. I really feel bad.”
“Why do people do that?”
“They have to. It’s their way out.”

They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes — they’d be back in captivity the next day but now they were out — they were wild with freedom. They weren’t thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps.

I want to run away with you. Where there is only you and me.

Roman Pearce: Don’t even think about takin’ the convertible. It might loosen your mousse.
Brian: No, that’s cool. That’s too much chrome for me anyways.

“We are all going,” McKinley said to his wife, and we sure are. There’s your labyrinth of suffering. We are all going. Find your way out of that maze.

Let’s make a deal: You figure out what the labyrinth is and how to get out of it, and I’ll get you laid.

And I wrote my way out of the labyrinth.

If wealth is something that has escaped you up to this point in your life, you are not unusual. Wealth has escaped the majority of people. What would be unusual would be your decision to do something about it.

I always knew who I was, and I always ran from my true purpose… I know what my job is. And I always ran from it.

How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?

Jeep is not a hobby. It is my escape from reality.

Zaysen: Drop the weapons! Now! You have no chance of escape! Come forward! I wish to take you back alive! This is your last warning! The choice is yours!
Trautman: What do you say, John?
Rambo: Fuck ’em!

Which is he trying to escape — the world or the end of it?

It’s not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?

You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

Hawthorne sucks… It’s a crazy place, and I’m happy that I was the weird one that got out.

The barbershop is about the man’s sanctum where he can discuss anything and escape from it all.

Chapter One, continued. More of what I was just saying…Never in a million years would I imagine myself being in Mexico. After all, who would? Most Mexicans spend the bulk of their day just trying to get out, so you can hardly blame foreigners like myself for not thinkin’ about gettin’ in.

Whatever has befallen you was not meant to escape you, and whatever has escaped you was not meant to befall you.

In these latter days, knighthood was an honor few Englishmen escaped.