“Sometimes I take all the shine
Talk like I drank all the wine
Years ahead but way behind
I'm on one, two, three, four, five
No half-truths, just naked minds
Caught between space and time
This not what they had in mind
But maybe someday...”

“My protagonists, male and female, are me. And so I must be able to recall exactly what it was like to be five years old, and twelve, and sixteen, and twenty-two, and.... For, after all, I am not an isolated fifty-seven years old; I am every other age I have been, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... all the way up to and occasionally beyond my present chronology.”

“I've got maybe five or ten jean jackets with jeans. I can pack three to four pairs of denim jeans, five T-shirts, ten Western-style shirts, and two ties and just buy socks when I get there. That, a Walkman, two books, and some records, and I'm out the door for a year. Not a problem. Doesn't freak me out at all. Usually, if you're thinking about your clothes too much, you're probably not high enough.”

“It would take a miracle,
But someday maybe I'll find
That I'm in the loving arms of someone
That I'll know, know he's the someone
Who'll kiss all the heartache away,
And come that day
I won't mind losing you.”

“Five years of destruction and mayhem, lives lost everywhere, shortages of food and fuel and clothing - and the insane mind behind it just urges us all on and on to more destruction. And we all keep playing.”

“Maybe they know what I know, that the true way to a man's heart is six inches of metal between his ribs. Sometimes four inches will do the job, but to be really sure, I like to have six.”

“I'm telling you, I wanted to. But I was trapped. You of all people should know what it's like being caught between groups”

“To me the great divide is between the talkative and the quiet. Do they just say everything that’s on their minds, even before it’s on their minds? Sometimes I think I could just turn up my head like a walkman so what’s going on there could be heard by others. But there would still be a difference. For inside the head they are talking to people like them, and I am talking to someone like me: he is quiet and doesn’t much like being talked at; he can’t conceal how easily he gets bored.”

“More and more
my mind shut
down
behind the wine . . .
until
I was conscious of just
sections of
time.
Bits and
pieces of
grey awareness.
Then . . .
v-e-r-y-s-o-o-n
it was
all
completely
dark.”

“Just as what is in the jar, when broken, becomes one with the surroundings, death offers the opportunity to recognize the basic truth of all existence through non-discriminating one-pointedness. Like space, the essence of mind is unaffected by transition and death.”