“What came is gone forever every time”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
shout blind on the phonograph”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“No more to say, and nothing to weep for”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Thank God I am not God! Thank God I am not God!”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Burroughs a purest ignu his haircut is a cream his left finger pinkey chopped off for early ignu reasons metaphysical spells love spells with psychoanalysts
his very junkhood an accomplishment beyond a million dollars”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Burroughs ... his very junkhood an accomplishment beyond a million dollars.”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Naomi: ‘And when we die we become an onion, a cabbage, a carrot, or a squash, a vegetable.’ I come downtown from Columbia and agree. She reads the Bible, thinks beautiful thoughts all day.
‘Yesterday I saw God. What did he look like? Well, in the afternoon I climbed up a ladder—he has a cheap cabin in the country, like Monroe, N.Y. the chicken farms in the wood. He was a lonely old man with a white beard.
‘I cooked supper for him. I made him a nice supper—lentil soup, vegetables, bread & butter—miltz—he sat down at the table and ate, he was sad.
‘I told him, Look at all those fightings and killings down there, What’s the matter? Why don’t you put a stop to it?
‘I try, he said—That’s all he could do, he looked tired. He’s a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Poet is Priest
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 Russia out of Kansas
The American Century betrayed by a mad Senate which no longer sleeps with its wife.
Franco has murdered Lorca the fairy son of Whitman
just as Maykovsky committed suicide to avoid Russia
Hart Crane distinguished Platonist committed suicide to cave in the wrong America
just as millions of tons of human wheat were burned in secret caverns under the White House
while India starved and screamed and ate mad dogs full of rain
and mountains of eggs were reduced to white powder in the halls of Congress
no godfearing man will walk there again because of the stink of the rotten eggs of America
and the Indians of Chiapas continue to gnaw their vitaminless tortillas
aborigines of Australia perhaps gibber in the eggless wilderness
and I rarely have an egg for breakfast tho my work requires infinite eggs to come to birth in Eternity
eggs should be eaten or given to their mothers
and the grief of the countless chickens of America is expressed in the screaming of her comedians over the radio”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“I am the defense early warning radar system
I see nothing but bombs”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“the day of the publication of the true literature of the American body will be day of Revolution
the revolution of the sexy lamb”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Now is the time of prophecy without death as a consequence
the universe will ultimately disappear
Hollywood will rot on the windmills of Eternity
Hollywood whose movies stick in the throat of God
Yes Hollywood will get what it deserves
Time
Seepage of nerve-gas over the radio
History will make this poem prophetic and its awful silliness a hideous spiritual music
I have the moan of doves and the feather of ecstasy
Man cannot long endure the hunger of the cannibal abstract”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“- an ant's dream's
funnier than
ours
- he has more of them
faster and seems
to give less of
a shit -”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Unspeakable King of the roads that are gone — Unintelligible Horse riding out of the
graveyard — Sunset spread over Cordillera and insect — Gnarl Moth —
Griever — Laugh with no mouth, Heart that never had flesh to die — Promise that was not made — Reliever, whose blood burns in a million animals wounded —
O Mercy, Destroyer of the World, O Mercy, Creator of Breasted Illusions, O Mercy,
cacophonous warmouthed doveling, Come”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
“Love that bore me I bear back to my Origin with no loss, I float over the vomiter
thrilled with my deathlessness, thrilled with this endlessness I dice and bury,
come Poet shut up eat my word, and taste my mouth in your ear.”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Kaddish and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
Born date June 3, 1926
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“The art of diplomacy is the luck of knowing more of your rival's secrets than he knows of yours.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from Assassin's Apprentice
“It would be inappropiate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? Taking a whole day to make a compilation tape? Asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or TS Eliot or, god forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at 38, to expect a song or book or film to change your life.”
― David Nicholls, quote from One Day
“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, quote from The Namesake
“I want first of all... to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact--to borrow from the language of the saints--to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, "May the outward and inward man be one." I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from Gift from the Sea
“If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.”
― Carl Sagan, quote from Cosmos
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The Reapers are the...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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