Quotes from The Basketball Diaries

Jim Carroll ·  224 pages

Rating: (25.6K votes)


“It was a dream, not a nightmare, a beautiful dream I could never imagine in a thousand nods. There was a girl next to me who wasn't beautiful until she smiled and I felt that smile come at me in heat waves following, soaking through my body and out my finger tips in shafts of color and I knew somewhere in the world, somewhere, that there was love for me.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries


“Little kids shoot marbles
where the branches break the sun

into graceful shafts of light…
I just want to be pure.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries


“they're fucking up minds they do not own.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries


“To sit in this awful mess and maybe smoke some dope and watch some innocuous shit on a dumb glass tube and feel fine about it and know there's really nothing you have to do, ever, but feel your warm friend's silent content. You don't feel guilty about not fighting a war or carrying signs to protest it either. We've just mastered the life of doing nothing, which when you think about it, may be the hardest thing of all to do.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries


“It was in Central Park near the lake and I watched a weeping willow turn into a giant rooster and fly off. No tree remained. It glided beautifully into the sky, a big blue barnyard. My mind went with it, something all you bald head generals and wheelchair senators could never imagine.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries



About the author

Jim Carroll
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date August 1, 1950
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