Quotes by Allen Ginsberg

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

Another lover hits the universe. The circle is broken. But with death comes rebirth. And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet.

one must verge on the unknown, write toward the truth hitherto unrecognizable of one’s own sincerity, including the avoidable beauty of doom, shame, and embarrassment, that very area of personal self-recognition,(detailed individual is universal remember) which formal conventions, internalized, keep us from discovering in ourselves and others

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and handand asshole holy!Everything is holy! everybodys holy! everywhere isholy! everyday is in eternity! Everymans anangel!

We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

Who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Spacethrough images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame

Just because I like to suck cock doesnt make me any less American than Jesse Helms.

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

Man is no form no mighty molecule no justidea alone — all that Thing — I feel man tender radiance at Heart betweenbreast and belly, that physical placewhere the Self urges — delicate sensation

I learned a world from each / one whom I loved

and he imagines carsand rides them in his dreams,so lonely growing up amongthe imaginary automobilesand dead souls of Tarrytownto createout of his own imaginationthe beauty of his wildforebears - a mythology he cannot inherit.

So he said, What would you like to do? What is your desire really? I said, Doctor, I dont think youre going to find this very healthy and clear, but I really would like to stop working forever–never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now–and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends.

America, the plum blossoms are falling.

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction the weight, the weight we carry is love. Who can deny? In dreams it touches the body, in thought constructs a miracle, in imagination anguishes till born in human-- looks out of the heart burning with purity-- for the burden of life is love, but we carry the weight wearily, and so must rest in the arms of love at last, must rest in the arms of love. 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 --must give for no return as thought is given in solitude in all the excellence of its excess. The warm bodies shine together in the darkness, the hand moves to the center of the flesh, the skin trembles in happiness and the soul comes joyful to the eye-- yes, yes, thats what I wanted, I always wanted, I always wanted, to return to the body where I was born.

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

Every American wants MORE MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if youre twice as aware of the rug.

I have no other possessions of value but my soul.

America Ive given you all and now Im nothing.

Everybodys serious but me.

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night