Despite some of his beautiful turns of phrase, I can't fully endorse this weird, drunk, pedo. 

You boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.

Don’t undress my love you might find a mannequin; don’t undress the mannequin you might find my love.

Human relationships simply aren’t durable.

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

she has hurt fewer people than anybody I know, and if you look at it like that, well, she has created a better world. She has won.

Sometimes I get out of practice out of tune. That’s all right.

I’ve known too many women and instead of thinking, I wonder who’s fucking her now? I think she’s giving some other poor son of a bitch much trouble right now.

I wish I were driving a blue 1952 Buick or a dark blue 1942 Buick or a blue 1932 Buick over a cliff of hell and into the sea.

The human sewage system is the world’s greatest invention. And you invented me and I invented you and that’s why we don’t get along on this bed any longer. You were the world’s greatest invention until you flushed me away.

I don’t know why people fuck with the stuff, there’s not that much to it. I think they’re all losers and they want to lose real bad. There’s no other way, it’s like they can’t get where they’re going or want to go and there’s no other way. This has got to be it.

I am going to start selling air in dark orange bags marked: moon-blooms

There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.

you realize that if I were an adding machine I might break down tabulating how many times you’ve used that light brown stare? Not that you’re not the best with your light brown stare.

Someday some crazy son of a bitch is going to murder you

Her kisses tasted like shitsoup.

read Hemingway only once, skip Faulkner ignore Gogol stare at photos of Gertrude Stein and read Sherwood Anderson in bed while eating Ritz crackers,

The bedpan is a merciless rock a horrible mockery because nobody wants to drag your failing body to the crapper and back.

So there we are: back to the barter system, the only way to beat inflation.

There is that which helps you believe in something else besides death:

This was better than I thought it would be. Honestly Brene Brown is kinda cult adjacent to me, the fervor with which people flock to her and espouse her teachings. But this book came recommended from my therapist in the time of my 40s, where I feel like I haven't really found (cringe gag) 'my tribe'. The idea that you don't have to bond with everyone you meet, and it's ok to let a conversation die if you're the only one pushing it along. I listened to it on audio. 

She kinda lost me at some parts - people who have different view points, I find that really challenging at times and don't naturally seek out that maddening cycle of disagreement. 

But I also did like some of it - the having a strong back and a soft front, and braving the wilderness involving being vulnerable, she talked about you can't be brave without risking something, you have to be vulnerable to be recognized for bravery. I think for me, I can kinda pull away in the social "wilderness" where to be brave means letting people in, being brave, being vulnerable. 

It was better than I expected. I probably wouldn't seek out any of her other books, but I might see if I can find a podcast interview or two with her about this book and topic specifically. 

I loved this writer's style and command of the language. I'd read more from her. I thought the history of addiction was kinda boring, the litany of temperance attempts and playerd in our country and how the Big Book came to be and it's failings. I connected more with the human elements of the story.