you go for these wenches, she said… you go for these whores, I’ll bore you. I don’t want to be shit on anymore… I said,

this kid used to teach at Kansas… then they moved him out he went to a bean factory then he and his wife moved to the… she got a job and worked while

Every night was about the same. I’d drive along the coast looking for a place to have dinner. I wanted an expensive place that wasn’t too crowded. I developed a nose for those places. I...

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…

Then some men came around and ripped out every other water– fountain. “Hey, look, what the hell are they doing?” I asked. I was in the 3rd class flat section. I walked over to another c...

But the next morning it was the sa… “That’s all, Chinaski. Nothing fo… It went on for a week. I sat ther… Then Bobby Hansen, one of the old… “I don’t care. I’m not kissing hi…

16 years old during the depression I’d come home drunk and all my clothing— shorts, shirts, stockings—

I laugh sometimes when I think ab… say Céline at a typewriter or Dostoevsky... or Hamsun...

That evening after dinner Joanna produced some mescaline. “You ever tried this stuff?” Joanna had some paints and brushes and paper spread on the table. Then I remembered she was an art...

I found a room on Temple Street in the Filipino district. It was $3.50 a week, upstairs on the second floor. I paid the landlady—a middle-aged blond—a week’s rent. The toilet and tub we...

had it for a year, really put in lot of bedroom time, slept upright on two pillows to keep from coughing, all the blood drained from my head

the girls were young and worked the streets but often couldn’t score, they

I had to take a shit but instead I went into this shop to have a key made. the woman was dressed