I’m just a big liar.

The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I’ve discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, “I want to love, I want to live…

One year I went as a pirate, but from then on I went as a hobo. It’s a word you don’t hear anymore. Along with ‘tramp,’ it’s been replaced by ‘homeless person,’ which isn’t the...

They’re hungry for something they know nothing about, but we, we know all too well that the price of fame is the loss of privacy.

It was all luck and it all started with that radio piece. If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably still be cleaning apartments as a maid in New York.’

I’ve become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof....

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar with laughter. “That’s what you get for leaving your wallet on the kitchen table.

Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?

The only bright spot in the entire evening was the presence of Kevin “Tubby” Matchwell, the eleven-year-old porker who tackled the role of Santa with a beguiling authenticity. The false beard tended to muffle his...

The things I’ve bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair.

Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ I hear. ‘Can we please just try to have a good time?’ This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn’t work. I’ve tried it.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

But instead I am applying for a job as an elf. Even worse than applying is the very real possibility that I will not be hired, that I couldn’t even find work as an elf....

For the first time in memory, I was unable to sleep not because I was anxious but because I was excited. To live in a damp crowded asshole and sing–if these guys don’t know the...

One thing about English-language bookstores in the age of Amazon is that it assumes that everybody has the Internet, … I don’t. I’ve never seen the Internet. I’ve never ordered a book on it, and...

Sometimes the sins you haven’t committed are all you have left to hold onto.

If you are any kind of an artist, then validation … can be a result, but you’re going to do the work anyway. Because you’re just wired that way. It’s so engrained, it’s such a...

My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that somebody actually knew me. Three somebodies, to be exact. Two were roaming the highway in a...

It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. “A...

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for...

I don’t know why it was, exactly, but nothing irritated my father quite like the sound of his children’s happiness. Group crying, he could stand, but group laughing was asking for it, especially at the...

Low ceiling, stone walls, a dirt floor stamped with paw prints. I never go in without announcing myself. ‘Hyaa!’ I yell. ‘Hyaa. Hyaa!’ It’s the sound my father makes when entering his toolshed, the cry...

It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the boroughs. Moving from one Brooklyn or Staten Island neighborhood to another was fine, but unless you...

When asked “What do we need to learn this for?” any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts...

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.

In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren’t enough...

When they’re born outside, crows come and pluck their eyes out.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I’m afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf’s lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep...

My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you’re likely...

Across town, over in the East Village, the graffiti was calling for the rich to be eaten, imprisoned, or taxed out of existence. Though it sometimes seemed like a nice idea, I hoped the revolution...

There are things you forget naturally-computer passwords, your father’s continuing relationship with life-and then there are things you can’t forget that you wish you could.

Seven beers followed by two Scotches and a thimble of marijuana and it’s funny how sleep comes all on it’s own.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

He has a passport,” my classmates would whisper. “Quick, let’s run before he judges us!

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn’t like it, and changed.

Underneath my window, there were huge groups of people running in the streets. They tried to overturn a car. So the woman opened her window and tried to throw water on them. So then they...

Like all of my friends, she’s a lousy judge of character.

Mr. Mancini had a singular talent for making me uncomfortable. He forced me to consider things I’d rather not think about – the sex of my guitar, for instance. If I honestly wanted to put...

If you read someone else’s diary, you get what you deserve.

Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something’s gonna get...

All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.

I’d think it strange that the boardinghouse attracted both him and me, but that’s what cheap places do — draw in people with no money. An apartment of my own was unthinkable at that time...

I’m not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across the face. It won’t stop crying, but at least now it’ll be doing it for...

Shit is the tofu of cursing.

He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father.”He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say...

On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned “Lie down,” “Shut up,” and “Who shit on this carpet?” The...