I’m glad when they arrive and I’m glad when they leave I’m glad when I hear their heels approaching my door and I’m glad when those heels

Her father really hated me. He thought I was after his money. I didn’t want his god damned money. And I didn’t even want his god damned precious daughter. The only time I ever saw him w...

They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor. “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me. “All right, Mr. Chinaski, we’d like to know whe...

think of de vils in hell and stare at a beautiful vase of flowers as the woman in my bedroom

But there were some good moments. My sometime friend from the neighborhood, Gene, who was a year older than I, had a buddy, Harry Gibson, who had had one professional fight (he’d lost)....

this poet he’d been drinking 2 or 3 days and he walked out on the stage and looked at that audience and he just knew he was going to do it. there was a grand piano on stage and he walke...

—he’s a dandy —small moustache —usually sucking on a cigar he tends to lean into cars as he transacts business

unaccountably we are alone forever alone and it was meant to be that way, was never meant

my moustache is pasted-on and my wig and my eyebrows and even my eyes... then something stuns me... the lampshades swing, I hear

Then the supervisor moved us to a new aisle. We had been there ten hours. “Before you begin,” the soup said, "I want to tell you some– thing. Each tray of this type of mail must be stuc...

my mother knocked on my rooming-ho… and came in looked in the dresser drawer: Henry you don’t have any clean stockings?

Sara was preparing the turkey dressing and I sat in the kitchen talking to her. We were both sipping white wine. The phone rang. I went and got it. It was Debra. “I just wanted to wish ...

That night I gave another bad reading. I didn’t care. They didn’t care. If John Cage could get one thousand dollars for eating an apple, I’d accept $500 plus air fare for being a lemon....

I saw Bobby out front the next day when I went to buy a newspaper. “Louie phoned,” he said, “he told me what happened to him.” “He ran outside to vomit and Tammie grabbed his cock while...