But then it began raining again. The Stone had me out on a thing called Sunday Collection, and if you’re thinking of church, forget it. You picked up a truck at West Garage and a clipbo...

It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I ...

The first three or four days at Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact, similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system was an accepted fact. There wasn’t a s...

I began receiving letters from a girl in New York City. Her name was Mindy. She had run across a couple of my books, but the best thing about her letters was that she seldom mentioned w...

I got a letter in the mail. It was addressed from Hollywood. Dear Chinaski: I’ve just read almost all your books. I work as a typist in a place on Cherokee Ave. I’ve hung your picture i...

take a writer away from his typewr… and all you have left is the sickness which started him

At Mt. Justin, biology class was neat. We had Mr. Stanhope for our teacher. He was an old guy about 55 and we pretty much dominated him. Lilly Fischman was in the class and she was real...

and the sun wields mercy but like a jet torch carried to hi… and the jets whip across its sight and rockets leap like toads, and the boys get out the maps

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

my doctor has just come into his o… from surgery. he meets me in the men’s john. “God damn,” he says to me, “where did you find her? oh, I jus…

in the winter walking on my ceiling my eyes the size of street… I have 4 feet like a mouse but wash my own underwear—bearded and hungover and a hard-on and no lawy…

horses running with her miles away laughing with a fool Bach and the hydrogen bomb

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