Allen Ginsberg · 119 pages
Rating: (1.4K votes)
“Which way will the sunflower turn surrounded by millions of suns?”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burde of dissatisfaction the weight, the weight we carry is love.”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“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”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“The grime was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis’ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt—industrial—modern—all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown—
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos—all these
entangled in your mummied roots—and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form!”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“No point writing when the spirit doth not lead.”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts...”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“Money has reckoned the soul of America
Congress broken thru to the precipice of Eternity
the president built a War machine which will vomit and rear up Russia out of Kansas
The American Century betrayed by a mad Senate which no longer sleeps with its wife
- Death to Van Gogh's Ear!”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“fortunately all governments will fall
the only ones which won't fall are the good ones
and the good ones don't yet exist”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“The message is: Widen the area of consciousness.”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
“We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
Born date June 3, 1926
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“Plato in his Protagoras well saith, a good philosopher as much excels other men, as a great king doth the commons of his country; and again, [2062] quoniam illis nihil deest, et minimè egere solent, et disciplinas quas profitentur, soli à contemptu vindicare possunt, they needed not to beg so basely, as they compel [2063] scholars in our times to complain of poverty, or crouch to a rich chuff for a meal's meat, but could vindicate themselves, and those arts which they professed. Now they would and cannot: for it is held by some of them, as an axiom, that to keep them poor, will make them study; they must be dieted, as horses to a race, not pampered, [2064] Alendos volunt, non saginandos, ne melioris mentis flammula extinguatur; a fat bird will not sing, a fat dog cannot hunt, and so by this depression of theirs [2065] some want means, others will, all want [2066] encouragement, as being forsaken almost; and generally contemned.”
― Robert Burton, quote from The Anatomy of Melancholy
“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”
― Amanda Grange, quote from Mr. Darcy's Diary
“We know so little,” she said, “about even those who are closest to us. We know so little of what really goes on in other people’s lives.”
― Susan Howatch, quote from The Wheel of Fortune
“Blue Duck could never avoid a moment of fear, when his father's eyes became the eyes of a snake. He choked off his insult -- he knew that if he spoke, he might, in an instant, find himself fighting Buffalo Hump. He had seen it before, with other warriors. Someone would say one word too many, would fail to see the snake in his father's eyes, and the next moment Buffalo Hump would be pulling his long bloody knife from between the other warrior's ribs.
Blue Duck waited. He knew that it was not a day to fight his father.”
― Larry McMurtry, quote from Comanche Moon
“OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.
But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.
When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this:
“You are not enough people!”
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who has six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.
They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty it was, or handsome.
Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
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