I remember the Model-T. Sitting high, the running boards seemed friendly, and on cold days, in the mornings, and often at other times, my father had to fit the hand-crank into the front...

It was noon the next day when the phone rang. It was Lydia again. I heard a long insane wail like a wolverine shot in the arctic snow and left to bleed and die alone. . . . I slept most...

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

But, there were still bits of action. One guy was caught on the same stairway that I had been trapped on. He was caught there with his head under some girl’s skirt. Then one of the girl...

you shoulda been at this party, I know you hate parties but you seem to be at most of them… anyhow, I took my girl, you know her—

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...

see this poem? was written without drinking. don’t need to drink to write.

we have everything and we have not… and some men do it in churches and some men do it by tearing butt… in half and some men do it in Palm Spring…

When I awakened it was 1:30 pm. I took a bath, got dressed, checked the mail. A letter from a young man in Glendale. "Dear Mr. Chinaski: I am a young writer and I think that I am a good...

all the women all their kisses the different ways they love and talk and need. their ears they all have

listening to Wagner as outside in the dark the wind bl… trees wave and shake lights go off and on the walls creak and the… bed...

ask the sidewalk painters of Paris ask the sunlight on a sleeping dog ask the 3 pigs ask the paperboy ask the music of Donizetti

you have to have it or the walls w… in. you have to give everything up, th… away, everything away. you have to look at what you look…

I finally, got a day off, and you know what I did? I got up early before Joyce got back in and I went down to the market to do a little shopping, and maybe I was crazy. I walked through...

the branches break, the birds fall… the whores stand straight, the bombs stack, evening, morning, night, peanutbutter,