Quote

At 17, all I wanted was to be a famous junky. Like all my heroes.

Jerry Stahl

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jerry Stahl
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: September 28
Autobiographer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Herbert W. Day
Junky
Heroes
Famous
Hero
Wanted
Like

More quotes by Jerry Stahl

Image
In my family, misery didn't just love company, it wanted hostages.
Jerry Stahl
Image
For me there was never a lot of glamor involved in being a junkie, it was about trying to hide the puke and bloodstains on my shirt.
Jerry Stahl
Image
I used to say, for me, writing was like walking a high wire, and heroin made me forget there was no net. Which is a fancy way of saying dope made me forget how shitty I felt for being on dope.
Jerry Stahl
Image
Heroin spread that soft blanket over everything. But once the blanket was ripped off, it took a layer of skin with it, leaving nothing but nerve ends screaming in the breeze.
Jerry Stahl
Image
I think it's just too kinda juicy and compelling to imagine people in their private lives, but then half the time people's private lives are just so much more bizarre and Ted Haggard-like than you could ever imagine. It's almost hard to write fiction anymore.
Jerry Stahl
Image
I didn't really start publishing books until I was 40 because I was busy being a McDonald's employee. So there's always a sense of trying to make up for lost time.
Jerry Stahl
Image
The traditional dictionary definition of the difference is that an alcoholic will steal your wallet in a blackout, come to, and apologize for it. A junkie will steal your wallet and then help you look for it. But ultimately I think all addictions boil down to just not being able to be with yourself for any long degree of time.
Jerry Stahl
Image
This is, I believe, what happens when people take their own lives. They're not killing themselves, they're killing the world. Either to spare it pain or to cause it some, depending.
Jerry Stahl
Image
Life can be lived as a temporary arrangement. Life is a temporary arrangement! But the longer you go without changing, the more obscure the likelihood you ever will. After enough time passes, the idea of another way of life grows even more misty.
Jerry Stahl
Image
There's no deodorant for desperation.
Jerry Stahl
Image
I kept getting high to kill my shame at the fact that I kept getting high.
Jerry Stahl
Image
There was a weird intimacy, sitting in a car together. Couples sat in cars. Cops and their partners. Strangers became unstrange, sharing a windshield view of the world.
Jerry Stahl
Image
Junkies are liars. They have to be professionally.
Jerry Stahl
Image
I've always wanted to be a guy with a rec room.
Jerry Stahl
Image
This is what I think: If you had the nerve to live what you lived, you should have the nerve to write it.
Jerry Stahl
Image
Rumi will transform you, in ways you didn’t know you needed transforming.
Jerry Stahl
Image
If you're here for four more years or four more weeks, you're here right now. I think when you're somewhere, you ought to be there. It's not about how long you stay in a place, it's about what you do while you're there, and when you go, is that place any better for your having been there?
Jerry Stahl
Image
Creativity is the opposite of TV
Jerry Stahl
Image
The second time I took acid, I watched myself in the mirror for nine hours. What I realized, when I stared, was that my face looked exactly the same when I cried as when I laughed. After awhile I couldn't tell which I was doing. Relief was just pain inside out.
Jerry Stahl
Image
Nothing ever turns me on so much in a woman as unhappiness.
Jerry Stahl