Pain and Despair

Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow’dst yesterday.

As long as some suffer The River Flows Forever As long as there is pain The River Flows Forever As strong as a smile can be The River will Flow Forever

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

It is still beautiful to feel your heart throbbing. But often the shadow feels more real than the body.

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.

There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over... Faint to my ears came the gathered rumor of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, and the slow everlasting groan of overburdened stone. J. R. R.

The austere principles of tact tell the tongue to keep away from the aching thought.

as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair; and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. J.R.R.

 

But childhood, prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.

Abortions will not let you forget.

It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

We were the first that found that famous country: We marched by a king’s name: we crossed the sierras: Unknown hardships we suffered: hunger.

 

Man, is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags Like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

I have done it again.

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.

Man hands on misery to man.

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail.

Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.