Allen Ginsberg Quotes - Page 2

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

Candor disarms paranoia.

A poem is like a radio that can broadcast continuously for thousands of years.

Truth is dissent, where all power resides in the Big Lie.

No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love- be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love -cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy

I had a moment of clarity, saw the feeling in the heart of things, walked out to the garden crying.

You too must seek the sun.

What came is gone forever every time

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.

Poets are Damned... but See with the Eyes of Angels.

The censorship of language is the censorship of consciousness.

A naked lunch is natural to us We eat reality sandwiches. But allegories are so much lettuce. Don't hide the madness.

Every American wants MORE & MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more & more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug.

Well, while I'm here I'll do the work — and what's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

The best thing about being famous is that it makes it easier to get laid.

I never dreamed the sea so deep, The earth so dark; so long my sleep, I have become another child. I wake to see the world go wild.

The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the strangest and most eccentric and at the same time, most representative, most universal... That was something I earned from Kerouac, which was that spontaneous writing could be embarrassing... The cure for that is to write the thing down which you will not publish and which you won't show people. To write secretly... so you can actually be free to say anything you want.

one must verge on the unknown, write toward the truth hitherto unrecognizable of one’s own sincerity, including the avoidable beauty of doom, shame, and embarrassment, that very area of personal self-recognition,(detailed individual is universal remember) which formal conventions, internalized, keep us from discovering in ourselves and others

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!

Breathe when you breathe. Walk where you walk. Talk when you talk. Cry when you cry. Die when you die. Let go when you let go.

Let the straight flower bespeak its purpose in straightness - to seek the light. Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose in crookedness - to seek the light. Let the crookedness and straightness bespeak the light.

Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!

America, I've given you all and now I'm nothing.