Quotes to inspire and reflect

Something like living occurs, a movement Out of the dream into its codification.

For this is action, this not being sure, this careless Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow, Making ready to forget, and always coming back To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.

You and I Are suddenly what the trees try To tell us we are: That their merely being there Means something; that soon We may touch, love, explain.

As I sit looking out of a window of the building I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.

often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart— you can’t plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

“Sun, don’t go!” I was awake at last. “No, go I must, they’re calling me.” “Who are they?” Rising he said, “Some day you’ll know. They’re calling to you too.” Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

If anyone was looking for me I hid behind a tree and cried out “I am an orphan.” And here I am, the center of all beauty! writing these poems! Imagine!

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday three days after Bastille Day, yes it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner and I don’t know the people who will feed me

oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much

Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.

I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart.

O mother what have I left out O mother what have I forgotten

Candor ends paranoia.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.

America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys.

How can I die alone. Where will I be then who am now alone, what groans so pathetically in this room where I am alone?

The individual is the product of power.

drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look out where yr going.

Into the company of love it all returns.

Aimlessly It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No One listens to poetry.

Springtime for Hitler and Germany, Deutschland is happy and gay. We’re moving to a faster pace, Look out, here comes the Master Race!

Total absorption in poetry is one of the finest things in existence— It should not make you feel guilty. Everyone is absorbed in something. The sailor is absorbed in the sea. Poetry is the mediation of life.

You were saved because you were the first. You were saved because you were the last. Alone. With others. On the right. On the left. Because it was raining. Because of the shade. Because the day was sunny.

The pebble is a perfect creature equal to itself mindful of its limits filled exactly with a pebbly meaning

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news. But that’s just our simile. The character’s invented, his haste is make-believe, his news inhuman.

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can’t quite name.

God has pity on kindergarten children. He has less pity on school children. And on grownups he has no pity at all, he leaves them alone, and sometimes they must crawl on all fours in the burning sand to reach the first-aid station covered with blood.

One of those old-type natural fouled-up guys.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.

Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me)— Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP.

Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road.

If I were called in To construct a religion I should make use of water.

Where can we live but days?

Marrying left your maiden name disused.

Never such innocence again.

Death has got something to be said for it: There’s no need to get out of bed for it; Wherever you may be, They bring it to you, free.

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue… he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master

It is time the stone made an effort to flower, time unrest had a beating heart. It is time it were time.

Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business, but she stands—bigly—under the unruly scrutiny, stands in the wild weed. In the wild weed she is a citizen.

The time cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

He opened us— who was a key, who was a man.

And remembering… Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.