Above All Else, Be Consistent.

The Idea That The Creative Endeavor And Mind-altering Substances Are Entwined Is One Of The Great Pop-intellectual Myths Of Our Time. Substance Abusing Writers Are Just Substance Abusers — Common Garden Variety Drunks And Druggies, In Other Words. Any Claims That The Drugs And Alcohol Are Necessary To Dull A Finer Sensibility Are Just The Usual Self-serving Bullshit. I've Heard Alcoholic Snowplow Drivers Make The Same Claim, That They Drink To Still The Demons.

As It Happened, All Three Of Us Turned Out To Be Real Writers--a Coincidence Almost Too Large To Be Termed Mere Coincidence In A Society Where Literally Tens Of Thousands (maybe Hundreds Of Thousands) Of College Students Aspire To The Writer's Trade And Where Bare Hundreds Actually Break Through.

As A Kid, Death Seemed Boring To Me. As An Adult, I Think That It Seems More Like A Waste Of Everything. Somebody Once Said Every Time A Professor Dies, A Library Burns.

Every Religion Lies. Every Moral Precept Is A Delusion. Even The Stars Are A Mirage. The Truth Is Darkness, And The Only Thing That Matters Is Making A Statement Before One Enters It. Cutting The Skin Of The World And Leaving A Scar. That's All History Is, After All: Scar Tissue.

And Poets, In My View, And I Think The View Of Most People, Do Speak God's Language - It's Better, It's Finer, It's Language On A Higher Plane Than Ordinary People Speak In Their Daily Lives.