Francesca Lia Block Quotes

Every Friday I used to have about fifty, sixty kids who would wait for me on Sunset Boulevard and I'd take them all to dinner. All runaways.

The courts don't remove children from their home because the child underperformed at school or required extra long walks or a game of basketball in order to blow off the steam all 5-year-olds have. It's because the parents were unfit, not the kids.

Statistically, Portland, Oregon has the most street kids, like kids that run away from home and live on the street. It's like a whole culture thing there. If you walk around on the streets, there are kids living on the streets, begging for money, but it's almost like a cool thing. They all just sit around and play music and squat.

My Struggles is a record close to me. It's about what I went through at home living with an abusive father.

If you ever go home with somebody and they don't have books in their house, don't sleep with them. I think that's very important.

I was 13. And on my own for about 10 months, but those were long months. My stepdad wanted me out of his hair and tried to put me in a home, a hospital kind of place for kids with drug problems, which I absolutely did not belong in. So I left that place and struck out on my own...

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

Most homeless kids are on the streets because they have been forced by circumstances that cause them to think that they are safer there than in any home they once knew.

I'd go and get really drunk somewhere ... in the street. Pass out somewhere and sleep in the gutter.

He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books...The books were the closest thing he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.

I've got one of Darwin's books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don't think you can swallow the whole piece.

I'm not going to go home and drink rat urine.

I wasn't eating. I wasn't sleeping. All I was doing was cocaine. I stayed awake for about two weeks, locked in my bedroom. I went down from a 142 pounds to 110 pounds.

In America, we have freedom of choice. But some are free to choose between Lamborghini and Rolls Royce while others are free to choose which dumpster they're going to have their meal out of next. Some are free to choose which, you know, homes and farms to foreclosed on, while others choose which bridge they're going to sleep under tonight.

I smoke crack. I get all my dancers together and we do a prayer.

I spent most of my seventh grade summer dehydrated, green-tongued, and smelling like a Malaysian whorehouse.

I grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood. I grew up around drugs, alcohol, prostitution, I grew up around everything, and I think part of seeing that from really young has made me really steer very far away from it in all of its forms.

I sit at home and read books. I watch movies. I watch television. I go and play golf. I don't go to nightclubs. I don't go out to dinner that often. I'm not a big party guy.

Most of the things that are supposed to be so objectionable in books are things that every teenager, in the United States, not only knows, but has talked about at length in school, or on the way home from school.

I made mistakes. I can’t whine about it. I’m the one that messed up and I’m paying the consequences. However, if I am given a second chance, I won’t need a third chance. And to be honest with you, I picked the wrong vice. I should have picked alcohol. I should have picked drugs or I should have picked up beating up my wife or girlfriend because if you do those three, you get a second chance. They haven’t given too many gamblers second chances in the world of baseball.

Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.

Don't you wanna grow up to be just like me, I slap women and eat mushrooms then OD.

But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn't know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.

Society definitely encourages and condones men's violence toward women. Not as much as it used to be when it was less visible, and there were still laws on the books that made it alright for men to beat their wives, as long as it was within certain limits, and women were chattel.