That year’s mingled scent of burnt coffee, jet fuel, lavatory disinfectant. Dismal at the time, now you’d give anything to have it back.

Every night you experience something far stranger than any drug.

I was young. I thought I was an artist, but I didn’t even know what that meant. Looking back, I’m embarrassed—even now, for what is obvious to others but not to me.

Book II:
After the booze ran out.

The future hasn’t aged well.

The world had badly damaged him, or he had damaged himself, or he had damaged the world, or something.

Realization: you’ll never get those days back again.
Realization: you don’t want to.

The best thing about God was all the money.

“Poland was a rainy place with a lot of crows, man, and it was beautiful.”

With art, he said, it’s not the thing that’s the thing, it’s the thing behind the thing.

Assholishness somehow protected him from sadness.