"'Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day."
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"If you're too open-minded; your brains will fall out."
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder
"
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"Poetry is eternal graffiti written on the hearts of everyone. "
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"Fuck Art, let's Dance!"
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"See
it was like this when
we waltz into this place.
A couple of papish cats
is doing an Aztec two-step

And I says
Dad let's cut
but then this dame
comes up behind me see
and says
you and me could really exist

Wow I says
Only the next day
she has bad teeth
and really hates
poetry."
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them."
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Poetry As Insurgent Art)

"I once started out
to walk around the world
but ended up in Brooklyn,
that Bridge was too much for me."
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems)

"Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty."
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
'whom I am
constantly shocking'
"
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again"
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems)