Allen Ginsberg > Quotes

“Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“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. ”
― Allen Ginsberg

“I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view. ”
― Allen Ginsberg

“we're all golden sunflowers inside.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“Whoever controls the media, the
images, controls the culture.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“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. ”
― Allen Ginsberg

“Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“Our heads are round so thought can change direction”
― Allen Ginsberg

“Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!”
― Allen Ginsberg

“I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I'll never be sane.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“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. And I’d like to keep living with someone — maybe even a man — and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“Everybody's serious but me.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-
sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“I know too much and not enough”
― Allen Ginsberg

“If I had a soul I sold it
for pretty words
If I had a body I used
it up spurting my essence

Allen Ginsberg warns you
dont follow my path
to extinction”
― Allen Ginsberg

“What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war, ”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“Just because I like to suck cock doesn't make me any less American than Jesse Helms.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit-
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images,
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations! ”
― Allen Ginsberg

“with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls”
― Allen Ginsberg

“what sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“Candor disarms paranoia.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use -- my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.”
― Allen Ginsberg