Jerry Stahl

“This was, I sometimes thought, the last gift my father gave me. And the best: His death stood out as the supreme-o…

— Jerry Stahl

I think there's a phenomenon of people who want to be around something that seems "dangerous." It makes them feel more real.

— Jerry Stahl

I always figured I myself would never be lucky enough to die, I'd just live on and on in this increasingly dreary…

— Jerry Stahl

“Not until I stopped doing drugs altogether did I feel like a man. Not until I walked out of that fire did…

— Jerry Stahl

“This book, for me, is less an exercise in recall than exorcism.”

— Jerry Stahl

“Not doing something crude right off is about as close as a guy like me ever gets to class.”

— Jerry Stahl

A waft of sweet hash drifted by, and I wanted to float after it like Wimpy levitating at the scent of a…

— Jerry Stahl

I always tell myself, when I remember the non-stop self-generated hell party that used to be my life, I wouldn't be here…

— Jerry Stahl

My own theory is that people are just so desperate for somebody they can feel better than, in America. Now that everyone's…

— Jerry Stahl

“...with enough rock in your system, you could hear every noise in the universe.”

— Jerry Stahl

I think that a lot of people are in love with stress. It's the dirty little secret of Western civilization. People often…

— Jerry Stahl

“There are stories you don't want to tell, and there are stories that scald your brainpan right down to the tongue at…

— Jerry Stahl

Heroin spread that soft blanket over everything. But once the blanket was ripped off, it took a layer of skin with it,…

— Jerry Stahl

“In some odd gush of patriotism, my mother had once vomited on the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, and a bust…

— Jerry Stahl

“Being a junkie, when you broke it down, was nothing more than a crazed day job.”

— Jerry Stahl

“When life becomes sub-human, sub-humans come alive.”

— Jerry Stahl

“I'm wearing a diaper. Right now.”

— Jerry Stahl

“Mostly what I remember is the way things looked sometimes after I'd push down the plunger, sometimes when I got so high…

— Jerry Stahl

“Maybe the reason you can never go home again is that, once you're back, you can never leave... ”

— Jerry Stahl

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…

— Jerry Stahl

“This is Hollywood's dirty little secret. It's not about making movies. Are you kidding? Forget that shit about "the Dream Factory." It's…

— Jerry Stahl

How do you write when you're not miserable? The solution, of course, is to make yourself miserable about not writing.

— Jerry Stahl

“It's not like I ever wanted to wake up and just be a grossly overpaid, self-loathing, can't-look-in-the-mirror-without-gagging TV writer.”

— Jerry Stahl

“Mom lived in 709. Five doors down from 714, the number they stamped on Quaaludes.”

— Jerry Stahl

You may think you don't want to throw your life away for mere fleeting euphoria. But, once you get a taste, it…

— Jerry Stahl