People From New York City

"I couldn't think. I couldn't remember. I was wound up like a spring and ready to bust. All I could see was the dead guy in the middle of the room and my gun. My gun! Somebody grabbed at my arm and hauled me upright and the questions started again. That was as much as I could take. I gave a hell of a kick and a fat face in a fedora pulled back out of focus and started to groan, all doubled up. Maybe I laughed, I don't know."

"The guy was dead as hell. He lay on the floor in his pajamas with his brains scattered all over the rug and my gun was in his hand. I kept rubbing my face to wipe out the fuzz that clouded my mind but the cops wouldn't let me. One would pull my hand away and shout a question at me that made my head ache even worse and another would slap me with a wet rag until I felt like I had been split wide open."

"She turned again, and this time she was closer. Her head nestled against my shoulder and she moved my hand up her body until I knew there was no marvel of engineering connected to the bra because there was no bra. And the studded belt she wore was the keystone to the whole ensemble, and when it was unsnapped the whole affair came apart in a whisper of black satin that folded back against the sand until all of her reflected the moonlight from above until I eclipsed the pale brilliance, and there was no sound except that of the waves and our breathing. Then soon even the waves were gone, and there was only the warmth of white skin and little muscles that played under my hand and the fragrance that was her mouth. The redhead had been right."

"When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking about how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you because you won't like what you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead."

"The roar of the .45 shook the room. Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. "How c-could you?" she gasped. I had only a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in. "It was easy," I said."

"Don't worry, I don't underrate the cops. But cops can't break a guy's arm to make him talk, and they can't shove his teeth in with the muzzle of a .45 to remind him that you aren't fooling. I do my own leg work, and there are a lot of guys who will tell me what I want to know because they know what I'll do to them if they don't. My staff is strictly ex officio, but very practical."

"The cops aren't exactly dumb, you know. We can get our own answers. Not like I can. That's why you buzzed me so fast. You can figure things out as quickly as I can, but you haven't got the ways and means of doing the dirty work. That's where I come in. You'll be right behind me every inch of the way, but when the pinch comes I'll get shoved aside and you slap the cuffs on. That is, if you can shove me aside. I don't think you can."

"I threw back the sheet anyway and a curse caught in my throat. Jack was in shorts, his one hand still clutching his belly in agony. The bullet went in clean, but where it came out left a hole big enough to cram a fist into."

"In there. The words hit me hard. In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle. Jack, the guy who said he'd give his right arm for a friend and did when he stopped a bastard of a Jap from slitting me in two. He caught the bayonet in the biceps and they amputated his arm."

"I've been in pain hope it doesn't show I've been insane well the time is slow"

"Everything is eternal Nothingness does not exist No thing has ever become nothing And nothing has never become something What is has always been and will always be"

"A slave in the fields one night He's running along Gets far enough to be a free man And he's feeling so strong"

"I'm dreading the time that is not near As a man on a cross I have no fear I can't believe these words I'm saying You've got to feel your lines"

"Well, I don't need protection One life begins, another dies Bad timing I won't last"

"I have seen the world enough I've drowned in my thoughts alot I canceled heaven I concede"

"Dedicating all of before to now emphasizing these things that won't allow"

"I guide my fate And what it's good for There's no telling It's blood It's a flood"

"You know this moment in time Is all my life Every day is each day that's passed Every person alive is everyone's who's died"

"Dream that you died It takes you out of your mind The black walls of space Take me all the way"

"You don't throw your life away Going Inside You get to know who's watching you And besides you resides in your body"

"All around they is to feel and watch you they make patterns to peel the sound"

"I fail to do What I'm trying I've been these walls And everyone who dies Hears other times"

"I've never been very smart but I connect you with your shadow"

"You’re pushing me away to decay like the day that I loved"

"The curtains were made for moving Cause you know sometimes you're not always there"

"In your pussy I'm cumming And I love you, and always had to Thank God I found you"

"I think any music of any worth has been done by people who were very interested in the internal process of their soul and their mind that's taking place while they're writing music."

"A child has this relationship to a creative force, you know? Yeah, your parents gradually, you know, they gradually shove your face in the concrete, and so do your teachers and school system and…everything’s working against you, but…but…but the force of creativity nature is not working against you - it’s right there for you, at any time! You just…you know, you just have to be ready not to judge yourself and to be open to whatever’s gonna come through you and to-to be ready to not…to not…eeeh to not judge what comes through, but be alright with it, whatever it is, cause it’s just the universe of expressing yourself."

"Well, I don't even know how to drive in this life, so I'm pretty far from ever having the life of being a stuntdouble. I liked- I had an Evil Knievel doll when i was a kid, that's about it!"

"Pagers are my life--I try to get them in to our music as much as possible."

"I guess this is the first time in a video that I ever showed my arms since my arms have been scarred, 'cause my arms are-are pretty badly scarred. I guess people are always wondering so I might as well say that, um, that the way that my arms got the way that they look, um, is was from abcesses, which came from shooting huge amounts of drugs. The results could have been a lot worse, so I'm happy to have the scars from a period of my life where I was living destructively, just as a... as a sign of what I've been through. And, uh, these days, I-I'm, you know, being healthy and taking care of my body is so important to me. But looking at it here, is seems like my arms have gotten better since then, so... That's nice to see."

"I can't say that I'm crazy, you know, about watching this. I don't like the person who I was back at this time, and-and, uh... I think I had all my priorities in the wrong places and I think if I were to spend to much time playin guitar as I did picking out stupid shorts and stupid hats and stupid, you know, overcoats, I would've... I would've been able to write some good songs, you know? I can't watch this version of myself and be at all happy about it. I want to... I want to strangle myself when I see this video. I was 18 years old. 18-year-old that deserved to be slapped upside his head."

"Pot put me in a position where I could walk far away from my playing and hear it in the second person. It helped me step away from myself. I stopped seeing the guitar as a thing I'm holding in my hands and started seeing it as a thing that's at one with outer space and nothingness."

"Sexual frustration is the single most powerful force in the world. We are the only species where that frustration affects things like the amount of money given to the poor and the length of welfare lines. I hate that the fact that George Bush's wife is an ugly old piece of shit could cause suffering among millions and could cause wars. I don't think it's any coincidence that Kennedy was the last president who had a wife worth fucking and he was the last good president."

"We have the ability to change our own reality."

"The cops are after me, I'm on my way to join an organization of lunatics and bombers, I'm wired for sound, my necktie turns into a smokescreen, my handkerchief will make you throw up, my Diner's Club card explodes, I'm the leader of a subversive terrorist organization composed entirely of undercover federal agents, newspapers all over the country are saying I killed my girl, and I'm on my way to meet a twenty-five-year-old Nazi built like Bronco Nagurski. If relaxed means limp, don't worry about it. I'm relaxed. I'm relaxed all over."

"What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back.'"

"In order to hold your faith intact be sure it's kept unsullied by fact."

"Throw out that fucking copy of Finnegans Wake you’re always carrying around and go read Donald E. Westlake. He’ll teach you everything you need to know about writing fiction."

"If Chester had a failing, it was that he believed people were what they thought they were."

"I've used pseudonyms for various reasons. In my earliest days I was writing too much, and needed to shift some of the product over to other front men. I've also done it to establish the different tones of the different writings: Stark doesn't write very much like Westlake at all."

"For me, the characters are part of the story, and come out of its development. I don't base them on people, or parts of people – the Frankenstein method. I base them on what I've noticed about the human race. … I cannot tell you how stories develop. I have an initial idea, and start telling myself the story, day by day."

"I was once — and only once — asked if I could have had a writing career without the movies. That stopped me, and I was very happy to have to think about it, and decide I knew the answer. Yes; not this career, but a career. Without movie money, either from writing screenplays or selling rights to novels, I could still have enough of a career that I could support myself and not have to work at some other job, but it would be, shall we say, a less lavish lifestyle."

"Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten."

"Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering."

"It was apparent ... that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong."

"Hispanics have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Come to that, the Irish and Italians and Jews also have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Thinking it over, everybody has a long tradition of defiance against authority. (Except the Germans, of course.)"

"Everybody in New York City is looking for something. Men are looking for women and women are looking for men. Down at the Trucks, men are looking for men, while at Barbara's and at the Lib women are looking for women. Lawyers' wives in front of Lord & Taylor are looking for taxis, and lawyers' wives' husbands down on Pine Street are looking for loopholes. The hookers in front of the Americana hotel are looking for johns, and the kids opening cab doors in front of the Port Authority are looking for tips. So are the riders on the Aqueduct Special. So are the cabbies, the bellboys, the waiters and the undercover narcs."

"I believe my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong."

"Brian had all that day to figure out what was going on, and yet he didn't."