Words To Live By: James Purdy

“The worse the author, the more he is known.” — Recently deceased author James Purdy, on gauging literary fame.

Worth a read:  The Gay Recluse tackles the Times’ lifeless obit of Purdy.

Words To Live By: Amy Winehouse

“I am a legend. I want to take drugs.”

Spinner [via Goldenfiddlr]

Listen to your ‘Filth Elders’

From New York mag’s piece on John Waters, now and forever the Pope of Trash:

Also recently, Waters accidentally smoked crack. He was having a party at his house in Baltimore and someone passed him a pipe that he assumed was packed with pot, so he took a puff. “I thought, Am I addicted? Am I gonna rob my parents now? I had a horrible hangover, but I’d been drinking anyway. I was glad, actually, in a way. I would never now purposely try a new drug, I don’t think, but I’m secretly glad I know what it feels like. All I remember is it freezes your lungs. I did meth when I was young, but it was methedrine, which became like a terrible biker drug, like the lowest-class redneck drug, and how it ever became a gay drug is still a mystery to me, because it was so déclassé.”

Hear that kids? When a man who proclaims himself a “filth elder” calls meth déclassé, it’s probably time to put down the pipe and reconsider what you smoke in the name of glamorous, hedonistic fun.

Words To Live By: William Saroyan

“Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

Words To Live By: Lin Yutang

“If one’s bowels move one is happy, and if they don’t move, one is unhappy.”

(h/t The Idler)