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The art and act of writing - speaking just for myself - involves getting your proverbial ass in the proverbial chair.

Jerry Stahl

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Jerry Stahl
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: September 28
Autobiographer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Herbert W. Day
Ass
Speaking
Getting
Art
Writing
Proverbial
Chair
Involves
Chairs

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There's no deodorant for desperation.
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I've always wanted to be a guy with a rec room.
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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.
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Nothing ever turns me on so much in a woman as unhappiness.
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This is what I think: If you had the nerve to live what you lived, you should have the nerve to write it.
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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.
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I kept getting high to kill my shame at the fact that I kept getting high.
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I always figured I myself would never be lucky enough to die, I'd just live on and on in this increasingly dreary spiral.
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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.
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All of us, at some point in life, choose our cliché.
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Junkies are liars. They have to be professionally.
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My own theory is that people are just so desperate for somebody they can feel better than, in America. Now that everyone's going broke and working 17 jobs - if they have one at all - at least they can look at these guys behind bars and think, At least I get to wear my own clothes to work.
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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.
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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
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In my family, misery didn't just love company, it wanted hostages.
Jerry Stahl
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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
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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
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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.
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To me, God is like this happy bus driver.
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Creativity is the opposite of TV
Jerry Stahl