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...

Anyone who watches even the slightest amount of TV is familiar with the scene: An agent knocks on the door of some seemingly ordinary home or office. The door opens, and the person holding the...

[I] recall thinking that the computer would never advance much further than this. Call me na ”,ve, but I seemed to have underestimated the universal desire to sit in a hard plastic chair and stare...

We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.

Sex,” the driver said, “Has no one ever told you about it?”I took the New York Times from my carry-on bag and pretended to read, an act that apparently explained it all.”Ohhh,” the driver said,...

I’d tried to straighten him out, but there’s only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.

Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling.

Hugh and I have been together for so long that in order to arouse extraordinary passion, we need to engage in physical combat. Once, he hit me on the back of the head with a...

I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.

In New York I’d go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I’ve upped it to six or seven, mainly because I’m too lazy to do anything else. Fortunately, going to the...

Maybe I’ll learn a trade. I’ve considered taxidermy. I always thought it was a shame you couldn’t do that on people.

I’m dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ. We worshiped a God named Sashatiba, who had five eyes, including one on the Adam’s apple.

What’s the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I’ll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for...

Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein’s monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He...

They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.