When people start acting stupid I usually stop reading. Those people aren’t ready to be characters yet.

He will live on for decades—eating, talking, laughing, fucking—while she will cease to exist in just a few weeks.

Ira wakes up floating in the muck with a taste in his mouth like rotten strawberries. 

Mahler was on his deathbed. The house had many rooms—some large and drafty with high ceilings; others small, airless, windowless, mere closets, “animal chambers,” some said. There were numerous

He was born before his time, and since it was not his time had to be put back in and born again. He would not stay in the crib. His mother thought he had wings. She thought he could fly around the room.

This morning a man came to my door and asked if I had taken a bath. I told him I was an artist and he left. I called Sinkowiz and asked him what that meant but he didn’t know. I like to know what things mean, their deeper significance.

I had to sue my landlord to get out of my apartment and then sue him to get back in and get my stuff. Here’s how it works. Every evening I go in with two uniformed patrolmen and check on my bags. I suspect my landlord would like to steal them. He is stealing them.

“Child, this ain’t no place for the likes of you.” That’s what Ophelia said to me this morning, when I showed her my new room. She comes every morning now to pick up the cartload of laundry

He had a right to that poem. Gretchen had been waiting all during summer school to hear him eulogize that, his, our, her lost world. Where is the Horse? Where is the horserider? Where is the giver of rings? 

FACTS: There are three women in his life. The first is J. He falls in love with her in his twenties. He has done poorly at university and barely gets his degree. There is no sign of his being great.