"I, I wish you could swim like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim Though nothing, nothing will keep us together we can beat them, for ever and ever Oh we can be heroes, just for one day."

"We accept the love we think we deserve."

"Oh, my God. My life is officially an after school special."

"You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things."

"Let's go be psychos together."

"Welcome to the island of misfit toys."

"If my Aunt Helen were still here, I could talk to her and I know she would understand how I'm both happy and sad. And I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

"I don't know if I will have the time to write any more letters because I might be too busy trying to participate. So if this does end up being the last letter I just want you to know that I was in a bad place before I started high school and you helped me. Even if you didn't know what I was talking about or know someone who has gone through it, you made me not feel alone. Because I know there are people who say all these things don't happen. And there are people who forget what it's like to be 16 when they turn 17. I know these will all be stories someday. And our pictures will become old photographs. We'll all become somebody's mom or dad. But right now these moments are not stories. This is happening, I am here and I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you're not a sad story. You are alive, and you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you're listening to that song and that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment I swear, we are infinite."

"Mary Elizabeth is a nice person underneath the parts of her that hate everybody."

"Dear Friend, I'm sorry I haven't written in awhile, but I've been trying hard to not be a loser."

"James Madio - Pedro"

"When I was young, about eight or so, I tried making friends with God by inviting Him to my house to watch the World Series. He never showed."

"You're growing up. And rain sort of remains on the branches of a tree that will someday rule the Earth. And it's good that there is rain. It clears the month of your sorry rainbow expressions, and it clears the streets of the silent armies... so we can dance."

"First, it's a Saturday night thing when you feel cool like a gangster or a rockstar- just something to kill the boredom, you know? They call it a chippie, a small habit. It feels so good, you start doing it on Tuesdays... then Thursdays... then it's got you. Every wise ass punk on the block says it won't happen to them, but it does."

"You gotta have presence on the court. Presence like a cheetah rather than a chimp. Sure, they both got it, but Chimpy gotta jump his nuts around to get it. The shy cheetah moves with total nonchalance, stickin' it to them in his sexy, slow strut. Me? I play like a cheetah."

"I was just gonna sniff a bag but one guy says if you're gonna sniff you might as well pop it and another guys says if you gonna pop it you might as well mainline."

"All I've been doing is reading this diary wondering how the hell I'm still alive?"

"I felt dazed, like I just came out of a 4 hour movie I didn't understand."

"Time sure flies when you're young and jerking off."

"I got six months in Riker's Island for assault, robbery, resisting arrest, and possession of narcotics. I sweated out a horrible cure and stayed clean the whole stretch, even though it's been easier to get good junk in here than it is on the street. Shit, it's been hard, man. All I've been doing is reading these diaries and wondering how the hell I'm still alive, and even if I care. Suffice to say that I'm finished with the asshole bandits of shower-room rape, and suffice to say that those swine guards won't draw blood from my ankles again. Suffice to say that I've been just thinking about dumb stuff, like what a nice concept it is to have a godmother and a godfather, wondering who my godparents might be. My mom won't visit me here, so I guess I'll just have to wait till I get home to ask."

"Know this. There's different types of users of junk. You got your rich dilettante square-ass who dabbles now and then and always has enough money to run off to the Riviera if he feels he's fucking around to the danger point. Street junkies hate these pricks, but they're always suckers, and their money makes them tolerable. Then you got your upper-middle-class Westchester preppies... same as the others, basically. What they're good for is opening their mommy and daddy's eyes to this social virus and putting pressure on the government to do something about it. Then there's us street kids. Start fucking around very young, 13 or so... We think we all got it under control and won't get strung out. This rarely works. I'm living proof. But in the end, you just got to see the junk as another 9-to-5 gig. The hours are just a bit more inclined to shadows."

"I'll tell you what, if our school was this nice I would go there more than once a week."

"The true story of the death of innocence and the birth of an artist"

"Every punk on the block says it's not going to happen to them... but it does."

"Leonardo DiCaprio - Jim Carroll"

"Lorraine Bracco - Mrs. Carroll"

"Marilyn Sokol - Chanting Woman"

"Patrick McGaw - Neutron"

"Mark Wahlberg - Mickey"

"Rory Cooper - Father McNulty"

"Bruno Kirby - Swifty"

"Alexander Chaplin - Bobo"

"Juliette Lewis - Diane Moody"

"Michael Imperioli - Bobby"

"Michael Rapaport - Skinhead"

"Ernie Hudson - Reggie Porter"

"Manny Alfaro - Manny"

"Cynthia Daniel - Winkie"

"Brittany Daniel - Blinkie"

"Jim Carroll - Frankie Pinewater, Credited as James Dennis Carroll"

"Tom Waits as Benny"

"William Smith as Patterson the Cop"

"Laurence Fishburne as Midget"