Charles Bukowski

The bookstore clerk was a good enough sort, trying to be a writer. His name was Randy Evans but he was too far into Kafka to accomplish any kind of literary clarity.

"Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have."

How I'd like to get in bed with her, I thought. But there was no way. Yet, somebody was going to bed with her regularly.

Like flies on the same turd.

Then there was a short period when you weren't with anybody, then another woman arrived, and you ate with her and fucked her, and it all seemed so normal, as if you had been waiting just for her and she had been waiting for you. I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.

She drove very fast, but she didn't drive fast as if she meant to break the law. She drove fast as if it were her given right. There was a difference and I appreciated it.

It was marvelous to see, and none of the drivers were angry, they were simply resigned to the facts.

He was affected and bland, a pebble.

“I had a dream about you. I opened your chest like a cabinet, it had doors, and when I opened the doors I saw all kinds of soft things inside you—teddy bears, tiny fuzzy animals, all these soft, cuddly things. Then I had a dream about this other man. He walked up to me and handed me some pieces of paper. He was a writer. I took the pieces of paper and looked at them. And the pieces of paper had cancer. His writing had cancer.

each person is only given so many

evenings

and each wasted evening is

a gross violation against the

natural course of

your only

life